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The Translations of Nebrija: Language, Culture, and Circulation in the Early Modern World

2016; Duke University Press; Volume: 96; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-3677865

1527-1900

Daniel I. Wasserman-Soler,

Historical and Linguistic Studies

In 1492 Antonio de Nebrija published the first print grammar of a European vernacular language. The same year, he released a Latin-Castilian dictionary, and in 1495 he published the inverse, a Castilian-Latin dictionary; the latter and the many editions that followed are the subject of this monograph.Despite Nebrija's significance, English-speaking historians have written next to nothing about him. The Library of Congress's online catalog revealed no English-language monograph about Nebrija as of April 2016. While linguists and Spanish-speaking scholars have written more, Byron Ellsworth Hamann (Ohio State University) points out that existing work has underappreciated “the constantly changing nature” of Nebrija's Castilian-Latin dictionary (p. 3). In this slender, densely researched monograph, Hamann explores Nebrija's 1495 dictionary and the dozens of vernacular dictionaries that drew upon it over the next century or so, both in Europe and the wider world. Hamann's volume is not merely a bookish exercise, as it were, highlighting the minute ways in which Nebrija's text changed from one printing to another. It engages not only specific discussions in the history of the book but also some broader conversations related to colonialism.The Translations of Nebrija offers two major insights that will engage all scholars of colonial Latin America. First, Hamann challenges the traditional “Europe and Elsewhere” dichotomy, evident in the current practice of studying the same centuries as “early modern” in Europe and “colonial” elsewhere (p. 122). Accordingly, Hamann adopts an innovative chronological approach in studying the long list of dictionaries influenced by Nebrija's 1495 work (not only Castilian-Latin texts but also Castilian-Arabic, Castilian-Nahuatl, Castilian-Purhépecha, Castilian-Tuscan, and others), neatly avoiding traditional geographical divisions. Besides the printed dictionaries, Hamann has tracked down manuscripts and trilingual glossed books, which here refer to bilingual dictionaries glossed with a third language (e.g., the 1555 Castilian-Nahuatl-Otomi dictionary housed in Mexico's Museo Nacional de Antropología). The trilingual texts form a small but crucial part of Hamann's book. He notes that the Americas produced several such texts (in Castilian-Nahuatl-Otomi, Castilian-Nahuatl-Matlatzinca, and Castilian-Purhépecha-Otomi, among others) during the mid-sixteenth century. Only later, however, would trilingual dictionaries, with Castilian as the leading language, emerge in Europe (such as Richard Percyvall's Castilian-English-Latin dictionary, in 1591, and Girolamo Vittori's Castilian-French-Italian dictionary, in 1609). Hamann's chronological approach offers interesting possibilities for transatlantic history: he does not make definitive conclusions, but he suggests that the relatively early practices of “colonial” American philologists might help scholars to understand European developments better (pp. 79–80). In closing, he notes that the dictionaries “do not obey a concentric logic by which metropoles radiate their influence outward to peripheries” (p. 122).Hamann's second significant insight concerns using European sources to study early Mesoamerica. Having concluded his scrupulously detailed inventory of the many printings of Nebrija's Castilian-Latin dictionary and its descendants (chapter 2), Hamann considers some implications in chapter 3. Given that scholars of Mesoamerica have long utilized Castilian–indigenous language dictionaries, Hamann seeks to shed new light on the caution that one must exercise with these texts. He highlights one compelling case, offering a critique of Joyce Marcus's Women's Ritual in Formative Oaxaca: Figurine-making, Divination, Death, and the Ancestors (1998). In that study, Marcus used Juan de Córdova's 1578 Castilian-Zapotec dictionary in order to note that the pre-Hispanic Zapotecs used several kinds of divination: water, stars, fire, air, and the sacrifice of animals and humans. Though Marcus herself had cautioned against using European analogies to describe the pre-Hispanic past, Hamann points out that even she fell into that trap. Hamann demonstrates—through his meticulous attention to a wide range of Nebrijan texts—that the supposedly Zapotec categories of divination actually originated in a 1553 edition of Nebrija's Castilian-Latin dictionary. They were ancient Roman concepts! He concludes that by studying Renaissance phenomena, we can better understand the pre-Columbian past of the Americas and avoid “forever remaking native society into the image of ancient Rome” (p. 121).These insights make Hamann's book a significant one for all early modernists interested in the connections between Europe and the wider world. Furthermore, his exhaustive research will prove valuable not only to Nebrija experts but more generally to linguists, scholars of the Spanish language, and historians of print. I have just a few minor critiques: First, it is too bad that only exceptional undergraduates will appreciate the book, given the immense amount of seemingly obscure details and the sometimes theoretical language. Second, Hamann includes little to no contextual information regarding the many early modern linguists whose work he discusses (perhaps it was a methodological choice). These issues aside, Hamann has written an innovative and provocative book that deserves attention. I expect that Hamann's forthcoming book, based on a doctoral dissertation that examined inquisitions in Spain and Mexico, will offer further insight into transatlantic history. The Translations of Nebrija showcases his wide-ranging interests and training in anthropology, indigenous languages, history, and art history and makes me excited about his future, pathbreaking scholarship.