Past futures. Some notes on Menéndez Pidal, Amado Alonso and the importation of Philology to America

Abstract

One of the culminating moments in the penetration of Spanish philological model into Latin America was the creation of the Instituto de Filología de Buenos Aires, whose institutional and academic influence extended far beyond the Argentine borders. It is commonly accpeted that this foundation “resulted from the conflictive integration of two different projects: the reformist nationalism of Ricardo Rojas and the scientific modernization program developed in Spain by the JAE (and disseminated in Argentina by the Institución Cultural Española)” (Toscano y García 2009). What, with this paper, we would like to add to this, is that the above said “program of scientific modernization developed in Spain” was not homogeneous but, on the contrary, faced two antagonistic philological models: that of Menéndez Pidal, influenced by the ideology of the “Generación del 98”; and that of his disciples, alien to those guidelines. The understanding of this distance is, in our opinion, fundamental to properly asses a certain development of philology in Latin America.