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On Language and Empire: The Prologue to Grammar of the Castilian Language (1492)

2016; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 131; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1632/pmla.2016.131.1.197

1938-1530

Antonio de Nebrija, Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra,

Early Modern Spanish Literature

On 18 august 1492, the lexicographer and grammarian antonio de nebrija'S castilian grammar—variously referred to as Gramática castellana, Gramática de la lengua castellana , and Gramática sobre la lengua castellana —was printed in Salamanca. Modeled on his earlier Latin grammar, Introductiones latinae (1481), it was the first such systematization of a modern (vernacular) European language and part of an emergent print and lexical humanist culture in the early modern period. Nebrija dedicated the project to Isabel I of Castile in a prologue that opens with a declaration for which the text is notorious: “language was always the companion [compañera] of empire, and followed it such that together [junta mente] they began, grew, and flourished—and, later, together [junta mente] they fell.”