A historiographical retrospective of the end of the 19th century: Bartolomé Gabarró and his <i>Gramática Pentáglota</i> (1886)

Abstract

Polyglot manuals for the teaching and learning of vernacular languages enjoyed a wide dissemination across Europe since their appearance in the Renaissance. Spain stayed outside of this cultural initiative with regard to the publication of this type of manuals. So much so that the first polyglot work published in Spain corresponds to the one that we present in the following study, in a period that witnessed the slow decline of the polyglot manuals originated at the end of the 18th century. Gabarró’s Gramática Pentáglota [Pentaglot grammar], written in the late 19th century, gathers five modern languages for the very first time: Spanish, Catalan, French, English and Italian. This grammar initiates a new grammaticographic tradition such as putting in contact two languages that had never shared place in a same manual before: we are talking about Catalan and English. Our objective is to rescue a singular and unique in its genre work from oblivion, by means of a detailed study of its content and preceded by an introductory study on the forgotten figure of its author, Bartolomé Gabarró. Gabarró was a multifaceted and controversial character in his time who caused the (r)evolution of the Spanish social scene with the creation of a secular educational movement, unknown until then in Spain.