It is only fitting to consider the classical tradition in the vernacular languages, whose presence is detected from the start of the twelfth century. Even scholars of the eighteenth century recognized that presence and esteemed it as being of great significance. But ever since the emergence of post-Kantian ideas about the work of art as an ‘‘original expression of personal experience,’’ the presence of the classics in Spain has been underappreciated. Even neo-Latin texts were evaluated pejoratively. Only a few critics from the beginning of the twentieth century dared to speak about ‘‘literary sources.’’ Even still, Marcelino Menendez Pelayo (1856-1912) recopied hundreds of pages grouped together in Biblioteca hispano-latina cla, sica (Classical Spanish-Latin library [1950-3]) and Biblioteca de traductores espanoles (Library of Spanish translators [1952-3]), fundamental works for the study of the classical tradition in Spain. Literary movements such as modernism and creationism returned to recreate the classics at the beginning of the twentieth century. And scholars such as Maria Rosa Lida de Malkiel studied this tradition in Hispanic literatures. Several of her studies are gathered together in La tradicion cldsica en Espaha (The classical tradition in Spain, 1975), which includes a review (339-97) of G. Highet’s The Classical Tradition (1949), which she chastises for its exclusive interest in things Greek and Roman and for what she calls the author’s ‘‘ignorance of things Spanish’’ (368). An unjustifiable ignorance: although the classical tradition in Spain might be ‘‘less important than in Italy or England,’’ since ‘‘in the Golden Age (the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), Spanish dominated Europe, it is impossible to ignore it without falsifying the literary histories of the countries which it influenced’’ (368). She also points out errors, such as attributing to the poet Juan de Mena (1411-56) a translation of the Iliad of Homer, when what he really translated was a post-Homeric version, ‘‘the Latin Ilias’’’ (369). Her entire book remains fundamental for work in this area.
2.2 Studies of individual authors
In imitation of the Italians, the Spaniards (according to Juan Gil) ‘‘forged at the end of the fifteenth century the idea of a mythical extension of the Iberian Peninsula across the centuries, forming a direct bridge between the Spain of their time and the Roman Hispania’’ (2004: 234). They inherited the direct tradition of the Greek and Latin classics, although in the Middle Ages the first of these arrived by way of Arabic translations. Even in the fifteenth century, which was a first Renaissance, arising soon after the Italian one (Nader 1979; Di Camillo 1989), the Greek tradition was known - with some exceptions - through Latin and Italian translations. Already in the sixteenth century the Greeks were edited and translated into Spanish directly.
Despite the poor Latin of Christian Hispania, there have been attempts (Menendez Pelayo in his Bibliografia hispano-latina cldsica (BHLC) (1950-3) to detect even
There the presence of the classics, in manuscripts, editions, commentaries, translations, and imitations of almost all the Greek and Latin authors. For some of them there are more recent studies, such as those published in the Enciclopedia virgiliana (della Corte 1988), which contains three entries about Spain and one about Portugal. Juan Gil studies the Vergilian tradition ab ovo (1988: 953b), that is to say, the early reception, revealed in inscriptions of the Roman era and also of the Visigothic period, during which ‘‘the fame of the poet continues living, but as a classic more venerated than read’’ (953b). The manuscripts preserved in Spain in the High Middle Ages and the translations and adaptations done later in Castille reveal, according to Gil, a continuity of interest. Margherita Morreale studies the presence of Vergil in all periods and aspects: manuscripts, translations, and imitations. From the seventh and ninth centuries she registers a reference to a manuscript of the Aeneid carried by Saint Eulogius from a monastery in Pamplona to Cdrdoba, the capital of the Muslim kingdom. From later centuries she recalls the presence of Vergil’s works in the Monastery of Ripoll, along with an ancient codex registered in the Cathedral of Salamanca in the thirteenth century, and others of the Bucolics and the Georgies loaned to King Alfonso the Wise in 1270 by the monastery of Albelda (957a). But she warns that the Wise King’s version of the story of Dido and Aeneas proceeds more from other texts than from Vergil’s. In medieval literature she finds Vergil the astrologer, the enamored poet, and Dante’s guide through hell. ‘‘The imitations and translations [of Vergil],’’ says Morreale, ‘‘begin in Spain with the Vergilian Eglogas of Juan del Encina (1468-1529)’’ (958a-b). And they continue by way of pastoral poetry such as that of Garcilaso de la Vega. Nevertheless she considers that ‘‘the most constant literary genre, and the one most universally linked to Vergil, is that of erudite epic poetry, which for the years 1550-1700, with numerous titles (close to 180), represents what was for the upper classes the equivalent of the comedia for the commoners’’ (965b). She notes that in the eighteenth century there arose an indirect imitation of the Georgics in The Seasons, by James Thomson (1726-30), which produced secondary imitations in Spain, where the Georgics had not exerted much influence during the Golden Age (966a-b). But the translators’ interest, she says, ‘‘was concentrated on the work most consonant with Enlightenment and Neoclassicism, the Aeneid’ (966b). There is a third study for Catalonia, where Vergil makes an entrance by way of the presence in Naples of the Aragonese King Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1443. The king who fomented humanism in his Neapolitan court also guided the arrival of this movement in his Hispanic lands.
On Seneca in Spain, the book Seneca en Espana by Karl Bluher covers a good part, although first-hand information is scarce. Seneca was very influential during the first, fifteenth-century Renaissance. In the library of Pope Pedro de Luna there were 38 manuscripts of Seneca and 20 of Cicero. Before Luna, the papal library had 11 codices of Seneca and 5 of Cicero. Bluher, however, also ignores the influence of Seneca on Gdngora. Some critics had considered the influence of Lucan upon Gdngora, since he, too, was from C(Srdoba, but they neglected what was known by his contemporaries: that in the style initiated by the Polifemo (Polyphemus) and the Soledades (Solitudes) there is a notable influence of the Latin authors of the Silver Age (Ldpez Grigera 2005).
Vives Coll, in his Luciano de Samosata en Espana (1500-1700) (Lucian of Samosata in Spain, 1959) offers data that could be complemented and reinterpreted, but that still form a base for the study of an author who influenced the Peninsula so greatly. The Latin translations and imitations done in Italy in the fifteenth century were diffused rapidly in Spain, where there were no direct translations, apparently, until the sixteenth century. Lucian’s influence begins, according to Vives Coll, with Juan Luis Vives (1492-1549), Alfonso de Valdes (died 1532), Pero Mexia (1496?-1552?), and Cristobal de VillalOn, among others in the sixteenth century, and continues in the seventeenth with Cervantes, Quevedo, Diego de Saavedra Fajardo (1584-1648), and Gracian. But we should also mention, for the sixteenth century, Antonio de Guevara (died 1545?) with his Marco Aurelio (1528), which should be situated in the tradition of Rabelais, and also Francesillo de Ziiniga. Another important omission is Lope de Vega with his Gatomachia (Battle of the cats), one of his great poetic works; still another we should not forget is the drama of the Portuguese Gil Vicente.
Juan Gil has studied Martial in Spain (2004). Martial was a poet who produced scarcely an echo in the Middle Ages and who, in the Renaissance, because he had been born in Spain, suffered strong politically based rejection in Europe. In his own country, Martial received a very diverse reception. In Salamanca the existence of manuscripts is known in the medieval period; and Hernando Columbus, the younger son of the ‘‘discoverer’’ of America, read and studied Martial carefully ‘‘when he was still very young’’ (250). On the various Latin imitations, which Gil studies carefully and with great erudition, we shall not detain ourselves here, since the Castilian ones are many and important. The revalorization of Martial appears concurrently with that of Latin Silver Age poetry in the last third of the sixteenth century. The Jesuits prepared expurgated editions for students’ use, as the composition of epigrammatical poetry was one of their pedagogical objectives. Garcilaso, Cetina, and Herrera imitated him. In the seventeenth century Quevedo, GOngora, and Argensola did the same with more dedication. And Baltasar Gracian (1601-58) proposes him as a model in his Agudeza y arte de ingenio (Wit and the art of ingenuity). Gil studies the edition of Martial done by Lorenzo Ramirez de Prado (1583-1658), without moral expurgations but with harsh reflections upon earlier, expurgated editions. Gil closes his essay by remembering how Martial provided material for the false chronicles of the Toledan Jesuit JerOnimo Roman de la Higuera (1538-1611), who ‘‘canonized’’ as Christian saints a number of characters mentioned by Martial.
World History
