The Hispanic World and American Intellectual Life, 1820-1880 (Studies of the Americas)


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This book examines why several American literary and intellectual icons found themselves to be pioneering scholars and lifelong students of the Hispanic world. The author asserts that these gifted Americans focused on the Hispanic world that they might shape their own country's identity after independence and the War of 1812, a crucial time for the young republic, and that they found inspiration in a most unlikely place: the seat of the collapsing Spanish empire.The Hispanic World and American Intellectual Life, 1820-1880 (Studies of the Americas) Review
This is a wonderful book-in some ways definitive--about the great circle of 19th century scholars, mainly Bostonians, who inaugurated the study of Spanish history and literature in the United States: George Ticknor, who wrote an epochal history of Spanish literature (and was the first American to travel to Spain --in 1818-- for purposes of scholarship; William Hickling Prescott, author of a great history of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella; Washington Irving, whose biography of Columbus was a landmark in American historiography (for political as well as scholarly reasons); Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, not known to the general public as a Spanish scholar, but a great one and arguably still the best translator of Spanish poetry into English. The only fault I see is that the objective of this group transcended the academic boundaries of Hispanic studies. These men belonged to a wider circle, mainly of historians, that founded the discipline of history in the United States: George Bancroft, in particular, Jared Sparks (bioghrapher of Washington), and Francis Parkman. Secondly, they established the first great research libraries in this country: Harvard College Library, the Boston Athenaeum, and the Astor Library which, later on, became the New York Public Library. They also were the prime movers in the transmission of European books and of European literary and academic culture to America, a massive movement which was, without any doubt, one of the two or three most significant cultural achievments of modernity.Most of the consumer Reviews tell that the "The Hispanic World and American Intellectual Life, 1820-1880 (Studies of the Americas)" are high quality item. You can read each testimony from consumers to find out cons and pros from The Hispanic World and American Intellectual Life, 1820-1880 (Studies of the Americas) ...
