Ramón Menéndez Pidal

Ramón Menéndez Pidal , born with Corogne in 1869 and deceased with Madrid in 1968 is a philologist, historian, folklorist, Spanish medievist , creator of the philological school Spanish, member scholar of the Generation of 98.

Biography

Born with Corogne, he studied at the university of Madrid, where he was the disciple of Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo. In 1899 it obtained at the university of Madrid the pulpit of Romance philology which it was to preserve until its retirement.

In 1902 it was elected with the Real Academia Española, where Menéndez Pelayo made the speech of welcome.

Named police chief of the king Alphonse XII, in the conflict of borders between the Peru and the Ecuador (1905), it benefitted from it, once its completed mission and the arbitration accepted by the two countries, to travel in adjoining countries and to study there survivals of the romancero traditional Spanish.

In 1900, it married Marie Goyri, the first woman to have officially made studies with the Faculty of philosophy and letters of Madrid, and which had left in 1896 there. In its company it made many excursions on the territories of the Old woman-Castille, to collect lovesongs there.

In 1925 it was elected director of the Real Academia Española and until in 1939 remained it, where it dislocated his load because it disapproved the decisions which the political power had made as for the situation of some of his members, but thereafter (1947) it was again elected director and remained it until its death, having obtained what it had asked eight years earlier: that the armchairs of the exiled academicians did not receive new holders until their death.

Work

In 1893 Real Academia Española rewarded its study on El Cantar for Me Çid which it published only several years later. Its first important book was the leyenda of los infantes of Lara ( the legend of the infants of Lara ) (1896), an exhaustive study of the legend and its transmission until the 20th century, very important because it would carry in germ its later company to explain in its totality the primitive epic poetry of the medieval Castilian, poetry at the time neglected by the critic. Its thesis is summarized in the oral, anonymous and fragmentary origin of the chansons de geste. It continued to develop this idea in its thesis of doctorate: Cantar del Mío Cid: texto, gramática there vocabulario (1908-1912), a paleographic edition accompanied by important notes of scholarship, but that current criticism does not accept obligatorily.

It rebuilt moreover the grammar of the time starting from the linguistic material of this work, which provided the foundations of its Gramática histórica ( historical Grammaire ), fundamental work, which was worth to him a price of the royal Academy of history.

He then undertook in the general Crónicas of España ( Catalog of the Royal Library ) the systematic study of Spanish Historiography. Thanks to its pulpit and with the Centro of Estudios Históricos ( Center of historical studies ), it was named director in 1910 and thanks to an institution related to the krausism, the free Institute of teaching ( Institución Libre of Enseñanza ), it was in the beginning of what would become the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Spanish equivalent of the National center of the scientific research). Its work at the University and the CEH, formed a whole generation of Spanish philologists: Tomás Navarro Tomás, Américo Castro, Dámaso Alonso, Rafael Lapesa and Alonso Zamora Vicente, inter alia, including one great part had to choose the exile after the end of the Civil war. In 1925, at the time of the silver wedding of its professorship, its pupils and his/her friends offered to him a consistent Homage in three volumes of research in which 135 Spanish and foreign authors had collaborated.

In 1902 at the time of its reception with the Academy of the Spanish language it presented El condenado por desconfiado of Tirso de Molina. In 1904 it published its Manual de Gramática histórica española , which was to be reprinted and enriched many times. In 1912 it was allowed in Real Academia of Historia with a speech on the General Chronicle that Alphonse X had ordered to him to compose. In 1914 it founded the Revista de Filología Española , which published work that at this time its pupils Navarro Tomás wrote, Rodolfo Lenz, Meyer Lübke and itself; one resumed the studies hispanists of the foreign hands between which they had been hitherto. It published there studies on Elena there María , the remainders of the Cantar de Roncesvalles , on vocalism in Iberian toponymy etc After the disappearance of the review in 1939, its disciples, Amado Alonso and Dámaso Alonso, took again the project by creating reviews distinct from philological research. It published in 1924 Poesía juglaresca there juglares , where it studied the origins of poetry in Castille and its relationships to the courses of the lords and where it rebuilt thanks to various fragmentary testimonys one of the first serranilles.

the epopeya castellana has notched joints of will literatura española (1910), translated per H. Merimée under the title the Epopee Castilian through the Spanish Literature , showed the persistence of the epic tradition Castilian thanks to Romancero and to the traditional theater Spanish baroque until our days (moreover, during its honeymoon Menéndez Pidal had realized that lovesongs of medieval origin continued to be recited in the villages and it was given the responsability to begin the study of these oral demonstrations of epic poetry, which do not exist in any other culture safe in the Ex-Yugoslavia). In 1925 it published an erudite study of history, España del Cid (1929). Reliquias of the poesía spiced española (1952); Romancero hispánico (1953) and Poesía juglaresca there juglares , whose last drafting is still of 1957.

Its strictly philological works are: elemental Manual of Gramática Histórica española (1904), whose importance comes from what it introduced the scientific methods into Hispanic Philology, Orígenes LED español (1926), analyzes monumental and of a deep scholarship of the historical beginnings of the Castilian, the author is held with the scientific respect most scrupulous of the sound laws; Toponimia prerrománica hispana (1953), etc It also completed various work on stylistics like the lengua of Cristóbal Colón there otros ensayos (1942), where it analyzes the linguistic characteristics and stylistics of Therese d' Avila, of Christophe Colomb, etc

In 1935 it conceived the project collectively to write a great History of Spain, which was not finished that little time ago. Among his historical works one quotes the idea imperial of Carlos V (1938). Very discussed remains its opinion on Bartolomé of mow Casas, in which it hardly saw more than one paranoiac, and than one will find in El Padre Las Put: known personalidad will verdadera (1963).

References

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