"Geographies of Philological Knowledge" examines the relationship between medievalism and colonialism in the nineteenth-century Hispanic American context through the striking case of the Creole Andres Bello (1781-1865), a Venezuelan grammarian, editor, legal scholar, and politician, and his lifelong philological work on the medieval heroic narrative that would later become Spain's national epic, "The Poem of the Cid". Nadia R. Altschul combs Bello's study of the poem and finds throughout it evidence of a "coloniality of knowledge." Altschul argues that during the nineteenth century the framework for philological scholarship established in and for core European nations - France, England, and especially Germany - was exported to Spain and Hispanic America as the proper way of doing medieval studies. Along the way, Altschul highlights Hispanic America's intellectual internalization of coloniality and its understanding of itself as an extension of Europe. A timely example of interdisciplinary history, interconnected history, and transnational study, "Geographies of Philological Knowledge" breaks with previous nationalist and colonialist histories and thus forges a new path for the future of medieval studies.

About the Author

Nadia R. Altschul teaches in the Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures at Johns Hopkins University. She is coeditor of Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World: The Idea of "the Middle Ages" Outside Europe.

Reviews

"Nadia R. Altschul has been responsible for some of the most searching studies of the links between the European premodern past and the colonial enterprise. In her new book, she turns her attention to the Americas and to the central role of Andres Bello in the formation of Latin American cultural identities. The result is a fundamental rethinking of an apparently authoritative humanism, revealing its Creole status. Beneath Altschul's lucid and precise prose is a passionate intelligence. It will be welcomed not only by students of Spanish-language literatures but also by those in postcolonial studies and transnational American studies." (John M. Ganim, author of Medievalism and Orientalism)"