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A note on the first published version of the "Epístola a D. José Manuel Quintana", by José María Blanco

1974; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 51; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3828/bhs.51.4.365

1478-3398

Brian John Dendle,

Early Modern Spanish Literature

Blanco White's Elegia i a a D. Manuel Jose Quintana first became known to scholars in 1943, when M. V. de Lara published in the Bulletin of Spanish Studies a text of the poem based on two manuscript copies—one of which is incomplete—owned by the Library of the University of Liverpool. The Liverpool manuscripts also provided the text for a more recent version of the Elegia, that of Vicente Llorens, who offers minor corrections to the text established by Miss de Lara. Lara and Llorens, in their brief comments on the Elegia a Quintana, differ markedly in their interpretation of the poem. Lara, claiming that the Elegia reveals a ‘pesimismo dulce y resignado’, discusses the work in terms which would seemingly suggest the enlightened sensibility of the late eighteenth century: ‘Sosteniendo el tema del desengano vigorosamente, en tono melancolico, pero sin desesperanza, y sin exagerar la nota tragica, se trata de una melancolia de buen gusto, contenida en la arquitectura del verso, sin desbordarlo, con mas propo...