Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1991. British and American Philologycal Studies (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 20)

Lehel Vadon: Spanish Roots of American Literature

6 Academy in 1766 s in 1780 Jefferson insisted that Spanish be studied at some universities. Instruction in Spanish was offered in New York as early as 1735.^ An important step was made forward in 1751 when Garrat Noel, the first grammarian of the Spanish language in America, issued A Short Introduction to the Spanish Language. The precious collections of the archives and libraries, such as that of the Philadelphia Library Company, the Loganian Library, the American Philosophical Society, the New York Society Library and especially the New York Historical Society Library brought Spanish America close to many readers and specialists. In the eighteenth century the two great channels, Spain and New Spain, cannot be precisely measured, the two sources were essentially inseparable. Yet in the sum total of higher influences (books, magazines, libraries, collections) the finger already pointed the colonies rather than the mother country, but the more distinguished intellectual influences came direct from the Peninsula. In the American literature of the eighteenth century, a literature primarily of state papers, religious tracts, essays and satires, there were no figures like William Hickling Prescott who dedicated Iiis articles, reviews, essays and books to Spanish and SpanishAmerican history, there was no ardent admirer of Spanish fiction comparable to William Dean Howells in Iiis esteem of Pérez Galdós and Juan Valera and there was no lover of Spanish drama and poetry akin to James Russel Lowell in his devotion to Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barka and Cervantes. But there were statesman, merchants, students and scholars, editors of magazines and newspapers, travelers and members of learned societies who touched in their own ways the rich, intricate mosaic of Spanish culture and reproduced a fragment of it in their own microcosm of American thought. Out of all the miscellaneous and scattered cultural contacts new concepts evolved. The authors used Spanish scenes, characters and incidents, and as they wrote they expressed these new concepts or themes: the descriptive essay, the epical treatment of the Conquest, the idealization of Columbus, the theme of the noble savage and the colonial versions of Cervantes' satire.

J ^ The first of these attitudes was an intense curiosity, revealing itself in the descriptive essay, article or letter describing the external aspects of Spain and Spanish America. Though the era of travel books on Spain was still in the future, the country with its people, scenery and customs is discussed with some objectivity in the letters and articles of David Humphreys, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay and John Adams. In this genre in early American literature Crévecoeur is a classic who writes sometimes from firsthand knowledge and usually with a simple eloquence. His portraits of the Spaniard are approximate and probably mirror more than his own opinion: a typical evaluation