to Greece, as we can see in the following two fragments from the first and third volumes:
La Grecia, provincia en otro tiempo de las más incultas el mundo, debe su ilustración y cultura a todas las partes de la tierra conocida hasta entonces; las otras naciones habían sembrado, por decirlo así, la semilla de las ciencias; pero sólo a la Grecia tocaba la suerte de coger todo el fruto. (Andrés I, 36-37)
(Greece, which in the past was one of the most undeveloped provinces of the world, owes its culture and enlightment to all of the known places of the time; the other nations had cultivated, so to speak, the seed of the sciences; but only in Greece did they come to reap the grain.)
el ver que de las colonias establecidas en Asia nacen sus primeros poetas e historiadores, y el observar en Homero y otros Griegos algunos pasages muy semejantes a los libros sagrados … da algún motivo para creer que los Griegos hayan recibido de los Asiáticas las primeras luces e las buenas letras. (Andrés III, 7-8)
(the fact that its first poets and historians appear in the colonies established in Asia, and that we see in Homer and other Greeks passages very similar to the Holy Scripture … gives us reason to believe that the Greeks had received from the Asians the first lights and fine letters.)
With his universalising ideal of human knowledge, Andrés was thus determined to acknowledge certain facts that most classical literary historiography ignored, since they represented a threat to the established, strictly Eurocentric model of Greek spiritual identity.
In addition to its originality, one of the greatest virtues of Greek literature, according to Juan Andrés, lies in the way that it fuses reason and imagination through the conjunction of scientific knowledge and belles lettres. Andrés’ emphasis on this virtue directly relates to the universal model of literature underlying his work.
Andrés, as indicated above, tended to consider Latin literature inferior to Greek, and even denied it a separate identity, considering it a mere continuation of the Greek. In thus rejecting servile imitation and according greater value to creative genius, Andrés adopted a stance that had more in common with the theoretical paradigms of the future than with those of the past. Nevertheless, he reiterates that “knowing” (as opposed to “imitating”) the classics is a prerequisite for the correct evolution of human reason and thought. Andrés proposes a dialogic relationship between modernity and antiquity, in which the former would benefit in its evolution from the teachings of the latter, but he never suggests that this relationship should be viewed as rigidly normative, according value only to the old.
In his historiographical approach to the classical and national literatures Andrés shows an appreciation of all their separate contributions, but sees them always in relation to the whole. Although he considers Greek literature inherently superior to Latin, he recognises in Virgil the apex of all classical poetry, and analyses in detail the reasons for the decline of both literatures. Andrés’ emphasis on the impact of each element of “world literature” on the others, his depiction of literary hierarchies as an organic whole and the rationalist analysis he develops, constitute a new basis (and a very advanced one for its time) from which to look at different literatures from a comparative perspective.
It was precisely this effort to evaluate the different constitutents of world literature in order to understand and appreciate the evolution of the whole that led Andrés to one of his most controversial theses: the importance of Arabian literature for the development of European literature. On this point he found himself in opposition to both the neoclassic and the romantic ideals. Andrés defended the argument that Romance poetry had developed primarily under the influence of Arabic rather than Latin poetry, with Spain playing a key role as the bridge between Europe and North Africa. This thesis was based on elements of prosody and, above all, rhyme scheme (an element that is non-existent in Latin but absolutely fundamental to Arabic poetry) and on the great flowering of poetry in the Hispanic kingdoms of the twelfth century, which Andrés ascribes to their constant commerce with the Arabs. In addition, Andrés gave full credit to the contribution of those whom he considered the true transmitters of science of the Greeks, and who therefore constituted a fundamental element in the development of European science in Europe, as we see in the following passage:
Toda Europa había dejado en un completo abandono las Ciencias …, los árabes entre tanto acogiendo las Ciencias desterradas de nuestras provincias, iban en busca de los maestros griegos que les habían enseñado, estudiaban sus libros, que son las fuentes de la sabiduría, los traducían en su idioma y hacían comunes sus noticias a toda la nación. (Andrés I, 138)
(All Europe had left the Sciences in a state of complete abandonment …, and the Arabs, having meanwhile welcomed those Sciences that had been banished from our own provinces, tried to seek out and follow the Greek masters who had taught them, studied their books, which are the fountains of wisdom, translated them into their language and made their news common to all the nation.)
Andrés thus broke with the earlier neoclassical tradition and with the emerging nationalist model. On the one hand, he played down the importance of Rome in the transmission of knowledge during the Middle Ages, attributing the key role to the Arabs instead – an unusual stand at the time. On the other hand, he rejected the quasi-mystical idea of the Middle Ages as the moment in which the spirit of the people came to light and shaped the nation through its literature, highlighting instead the importance of an external culture (and moreover one that was not European). Nobody today would be surprised by such a thesis, but it presupposed a huge leap forward in Abbé Andrés’ day, and was probably one of the reasons why he is largely forgotten today.
Notwithstanding this universalist approach and the rationalist historiographical model that underlies it – a model based on the recognition of the value of each contribution, wherever it might come from – Andrés was also an apologist for Spanish literature. What we find in his Dell’Origine, progressi e stato attuale d’ogni letteratura is more than a comparative history of different literatures. It offers, rather, a “contrasted history of Spanish literature”, that is to say, a history of Spanish literature in which connections and relations are established with other literatures. But this focus on Spain is no reason to deny the universal and comparative nature of the work. Undoubtedly, there was an apologetic purpose to Andrés works, which related to the treatment of classical literatures: Andrés was seeking to absolve Spanish literature from the accusations levelled at it by the Italian scholars Tiraboschi and Bettinelli, who claimed that Spanish literature was decadent, and that in the person of Martial, Seneca and Lucan – all of them Latin writers born in Hispania – it had even provoked the decline of Latin literature. The notion of including these Latin authors in the history of Spanish literature was not new; it could be found, for example, in the very extensive, though unfinished history written by the Mohedano fathers. Until the second half of the twentieth century, it was also a popular element in Spain’s classical philology, and was usually referred to as “Spanish sennequism”. Andrés deconstructs the arguments of the Italian critics by showing that the decline of Roman literature cannot be attributed to a group of authors born on Spanish soil, but rather to internal factors within Latin literature. The argument demonstrates his ability to differentiate clearly between Spanish and Latin literatures as different kinds of literature, even though they are clearly related in the continuum of world literature. He thereby rejects the “geographic determinism” shown by the Italian critics and previously formulated by Montesquieu.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, we may say that Andrés’ historiographic proposals are unique, especially in relation to the dialectic established between classical and “national” European literatures. His solution, as an heir to the historiography of the Enlightenment – albeit one who in many respects departed radically from its precepts – is not an attempt to define world literature as a category by eliding the differences between the various contributions to it, but rather
