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GEOGRAPHY AND LITERATURE:ON A COMPARATIVE HISTORYOF THE LITERATURES IN THE IBERIAN PENINSULA1

When one approaches a project like that of a comparative history of the literatures inthe Iberian Peninsula, it proves inevitable to preliminarily raise a series of questionsthat affect the meaning and the possibility of carrying it forward. We could doubt, forexample, its internal congruency, the pertinence of establishing a geographic elementas a framework for an inquiry of historiographic character, and, of course, the suitabil-ity of the regular historical categories for examining these literatures. And, without adoubt, the character of the basic unity that seems to be involved in the overall treat-ment of the literary productions restricted by this common geographic environmentwill raise certain skepticism as well. Nevertheless, beyond methodological and con-ceptual problems, there is an underlying reason that, from a wishful perspective,seems to justify the necessity and opportunity of a work proposal such as this: I refer tothe secondary role that Peninsular literatures (Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, Catalan,and Basque) seem to have played, in general terms, in the international developmentof comparativism, especially as far as comparativism is understood as a version of thehistory of literature. Indeed there is a feeling that these literatures, except for certainreferences close to the stereotype or the commonplace, have not carried out the rolethat befits them. This feeling suggests, among other things, the scant and superficialimplication, save for exceptions as much rare as brilliant, of the Peninsular academiccommunities in the comparatist tradition and in the theoretic-methodological reflec-tion related to it.

A pertinent question would be to ask why this has been so; that is, why hascomparativism held such a weak institutional attraction for Peninsular academic cir-cles, and, moreover, why has it happened that literatures of the Iberian Peninsula oc-cupy a marginal zone in the general design of European Comparativism? Concerningthis, we should pay specific attention to the circumstance, apparently contradictory to

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Neohelicon 30 (2003) 1, 117–125

1 This article is related to a research project that deals with approaching the difficulties of a possi-ble comparative history of the literatures in the Iberian Peninsula. Such project receives fundingfrom the Spanish Ministry of Research and Technology (BFF-2001-3812), from the Xunta deGalicia (PGIDIT02PXIC20401PN) and from the European Community (FEDER Funds).

the previous one, of Spanish and Portuguese literatures having an absolutely relevantplace in texts so decisive in the development of a comparative historiography of litera-ture as, just to cite one important source, the Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur(1815), by Friedrich Schlegel. Besides, the mutual indifference that I have referred tohas tended to cover up the circumstance that notions such as that of Spanish literaturesubstantially depended, with regard to their modern characterization in a Europeancontext, on works of such a clear comparatist mood like that by Friedrich Bouterwek,in 12 volumes (Geschichte der Poesie und Beredsamkeit seit dem Ende der drei-zehnten Jahrhunderts, 1805–1879), or the four-volume work by Simonde de Sis-mondi (De la littérature du midi de l’Europe, 1813), respectively dedicated to the his-tory of poetry and eloquence in Europe and to the history of southern European litera-tures. To some extent, the national historiographic traditions of the literatures of theIberian Peninsula could be said to derive in fact from the exogenous perspective ofthese authors, starting out from the partial translation of the sections that dealt withthem.

There is nothing surprising about the way things have occurred. Regardless of thecauses, the historiography of the Peninsular literatures in the 19th century occupied asecondary role in relation to the methodological development of literary history asa discipline. As a result the Peninsular literatures became on the essentials reliant bothon the dominant historiographic tendencies in Europe, and, in what concerns the pecu-liarity of their image and contents, on the position that was assigned to them inthe general European order. We should not forget in this respect the observation ofIgor Chernov, professor of Russian Literature in the University of Tartu, when he as-sured that “to define any given concrete literature as national necessitates its com-parison with other entities, similar in kind but different in magnitude: other nationalliteratures, cosmopolitan and world literatures”2. The terms of comparison, implicit orexplicit, are here decisive, and, obviously, so are the academic and ideological envi-ronments from which they are carved out. And to a large extent the “national” charac-teristics of literatures like the Spanish one depend on an outside determination in the19th century. That is, they are more a result of a heterodefinition than of a self-defini-tion. This circumstance would partly explain the rejection of 19th century historiogra-phy by some of the major intellectuals at the end of that century and the beginning ofthe 20th.

However, vindictive urge or reasons of self-respect do not seem to be the most con-vincing arguments at this stage to endorse the interest of a historiographic project likethe mentioned. Precisely under the first steps of the project of a Comparative Historyof Literatures in European Languages, Claudio Guillén put forward reasons of muchgreater interest and pertinence, which can actually help explain the theoretical andmethodological interest of our project. This leading authority on comparativism con-sidered, a long ago now, the Peninsular case as “methodologically crucial” with the

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2 Igor Chernov. “National Literature: Theoretical Marginalia.” Poetics Today, 12 (1991):769–771. p. 770.

argument that “en él se destaca visiblemente que la historia consta no de una serie deperíodos dispares sino de la coexistencia y confrontación de procesos y duraciones”3.He thought that thorough attention to the Peninsular situation would show the inade-quacy of the usual methodological standards and what had been misdirected in an ex-cessively synthetic and linear conception of temporality. Guillén was thinking of therelative diverse and disperse character of the cultural Peninsular traditions and of thedoubtful usefulness of submitting them to a more or less restricted set of articulationsbased on the inflexible succession of periods or movements. He also hinted, I suppose,at the difficulties brought up by both those different traditions and by the American,African, and Asian dimensions of the Peninsular cultures starting from the 15th cen-tury regarding an excessively confident and self-centered conception of what the ad-jective “European” means; in other words, he hinted at the inevitable appearance ofcolonization as an aspect as much proclaimed as silenced of European culture and lit-erature.

The Iberian Peninsula (the most insular of all the peninsulas, according to ÁngelGanivet, and which Saramago converted into jangada de pedra) becomes, then, an at-tractive analytical object precisely for its disruptive character within its own terms,given that each one of the project’s key words (Peninsula, comparative history, litera-ture), in spite of its apparent firmness, proves to be enormously elusive and difficult toassume as an unequivocal referent. It is not only that we should pay the attention dueto the uncertainties of the notion of literature or to the doubtful epistemological con-sistency of the principle of literary comparison. Yes, in this particular case, probablythe most relevant has to do with the consequences of the conversion of a geographicdetermination, such as the peninsular, into a literary category. The main novelties of aproject such as this derive from this methodological option; namely, from the accep-tance as a point of departure of such a forcefully geographic and preliterary frame-work for the introduction of a comparative perspective. This is not new on the essen-tials: the European Midi, the sub-Sahara, the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe have al-ready acquired an institutionally geoliterary character, and as a consequence theyhave served as a category of diverse historical comparative literature projects from thebeginnings of comparativism up until today. The same has happened, even in an ex-panded way, with the peninsulas of the European continent as a whole, transformedinto specific geoliterary entities thanks to Raymond Queneau. As a matter of fact, it isinteresting to remember that in the second volume of the Histoire des littératures ofthe Encyclopédie de la Pléaide, which is dedicated to the so-called Western litera-tures, the guiding principle was of a geographical order, and there is a distinction be-tween “far western” literatures (Icelandic, Gaelic...), identified with insular litera-tures, peninsular (northern or southern), northern continental, central European, andEastern European or Balkan literatures4. Such are the basic areas that were recog-

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3 Claudio Guillén. “Sobre el objeto del cambio literario.” Teorías de la historia literaria. Madrid:Espasa Calpe, 1989. 199–248. p. 203.

4 Raymond Queneau (ed.). Histoire des littératures. Paris: Gallimard, 1968. Vol. II.

nized. The peninsular condition was converted, as a result, into the characterizingelement of a group of European literatures. It turned out to be a particular form ofliterary Europeanness. Anyway, the highest expression of Europeanness as such wasimplicitly reserved (not very surprisingly) to French literature. This sort of centrality,that of French literature, served as a tacit deictic orientation in order to locate theremaining literatures, as well as a point of periodological reference with the purposeof measuring the major or minor normality of the development of the variousliteratures. So, a spatial and temporal axis of reference coalesced into an implicitaxiological framework, without a doubt, extremely efficient.

It is worth remembering, nevertheless, that the geographic option needs not takefor granted this kind of geo- and chronoliterary assumptions. The geographical optionmay very well act in an opposite sense, obviously under certain circumstances. In ourcase, like in some of the ones mentioned, the spatial setting – the option in favour oflocalization, a diffuse and contentious localization in fact – implies primarily a sharpdistancing from the historiographic perspective that favours periods or movements,tracks that have frequently oriented the march of comparativism. Actually, if we giveit a thought, the resort to geography has been generally reserved for literatures, if notemerging, at least somewhat reluctant to the periodological standards of the “great lit-eratures”. This perspective is based more often than not on the surreptitious idea, stillin force, according to which the unity of a certain literature relies on the supposeduniqueness, specificity, and internal coherence of its underlying periodologicalscheme; while its centrality is measured by the agreement and suitability with the ca-nonical periods recognized as landmarks in Western literature: Middle Ages, Renais-sance, Baroque, Classicism, Illustration, Romanticism, Realism, Decadentism/Fin deSiècle, Modernism...

The periodological issue becomes a key question when defending the pertinence ofsuch a notion as that of European or Western Literature, in which the geoliterary real-ity is hidden behind the postulation of certain values. As it is well known, one of thebasic principles of its unity has been situated by its defenders in the possibility of de-fining a coherent periodological system. And so, literatures that adjust to the pattern or“general scheme” I have just indicated become representative of an appropriate andfavorable development. But still more consequential is that the rest of the national lit-eratures, whose existence is taken for granted, are subject, by virtue of what would fitto be called a referential discrimination, to the situation of deviations, anomalies orparticular developments defined in some cases by the lack (défaut) of and in others bythe delay with regard to certain landmarks which define authentic axiologic points ofreference; the normal rhythm, in short, of the evolution or development of literatures.From that point, there is not but just a minimum distance for the hierarchical organiza-tion of literatures according to its degree of accommodation to the privileged standard(that of a periodological pattern considered general, but in reality very particular) ascomplete and incomplete, constituent and inconstituent, central and peripheral; al-ways by virtue of an undoubted chronoliterary bias. It is worth paying attention to thereflection of the Slovak comparatist Dionýz Ðurišin, especially appropriate for the

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complex framework of European literatures and the historiographic tradition that hastaken them as an object:

A determinare ulteriormente la vita e la configurazione delle comunità interlitterarie è losviluppo storico da esse raggiunto, che ne sottolinea la complessità interna, causa di numerosiproblemi nella comparatistica tradizionale. Questo critterio divide la letteratura in due gruppi:da un lato le letterature ben differenziate aventi un loro sviluppo dinamico, dall’altro tutte lerimanenti. Tale impostazione serviva spesso da pretesto per dar luogo a valutazionevolutamente o meccanicamente apprioristiche dei due gruppi considerate, che venivanocontrapposti in termini di “grandi letterature vs piccole letterature”, se non addirittura di“letterature constituenti e non.” Per questi ed altri casi simili si suponeva l’essistenza di unosviluppo analogico delle singole letterature, cosa che portò come conseguenza l’uso di ununico criterio di valutazione. Le letterature venivano cioè considerate derivanti le una dallealtre, il che trovava espressione nell’uso dei concetti di “dipendenza”, “influenza”, ecc.5

The periodological model, in short, depends on the analogy, and therefore, on the pre-determination of an axis of reference, that, warningly or not, becomes easilyaxiological. And this applies not only to the relation of Peninsular literatures withthose that have traditionally defined the concept of European, but also to the Castilianand Portuguese literatures in relation to Galician, Basque, Catalan, and some othersthat could be considered as well.

No doubt that for the option of localization being fruitful as an alternative to theperiodological rule it is important to avoid converting the Peninsula into a locus that,as such, would lead to take as fact beforehand the consistency of the project. Let us re-member Carlo Dionisotti, who has most clearly questioned the relationship betweengeography and literature, when he reproached the history of the Italian literature byTiraboschi (1772–1782) for its incapacity to attribute to the geographic definition,also peninsular, “altro valore che di un limite, di un contenente solido per la fluidamateria che gli importava raccogliere”. And also when he added that “nel Tiraboschil’intellegenza dei fattori geografici resta inferiore a quella che egli ebbe dei fattoricronologici, e naturalmente fuori della sua considerazione doveva rimanere ilrapporto di spazio e tempo di un paessaggio storico”6.

Dealing with Literature(s) of the Iberian Peninsula, as long as the disparity be-tween space and nation becomes evident, seems to lack the presuppositions – the anxi-ety of identity – that surround each one of the different Peninsular literatures takenseparately, or even of those that have historically defined the horizon of, for example,a European literature. But it cannot certainly be ignored either, as way of precaution,the role payed by traditions like that of a certain Iberianism, or more crudely, that ofthe fundamentalism of the geographic limits – starting from the Hispanic Colonial de-

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5 Dionýz Ðurišin. “Le comunità interletterarie: una categoria fondamentale del processointerletterario.” Comparare i comparatismi: La comparatistica letteraria oggi in Europa e nelmondo. Ed. Armando Gnisci and F. Sinopoli. Roma: Lithos, 1995. 67–81. p. 71.

6 Carlo Dionisotti. Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana. Torino: Einaudi, 19772. p. 29.

cline and, as a consequence, from the hasty and imposing association of geographyand culture – that made Ganivet, for example, consider in his Idearium español (1897)Portugal or Gibraltar as perturbations of the “natural limits of Spain”7. It is good to re-call as well that the relationship between geographic limits and literature has been adecisive factor in historiographic tradition, and that at least in a double aspect that hasbeen made crystal clear in the Hegelian system. In the first case, by the inheritance ofthe 18th century aesthetics, geography in a broad sense – that is, as a medium – is inter-preted as a natural determination and, thus, as an explanation of the specific character-istics of a given literature. And secondly, geography becomes the setting of the inexo-rable march of history from the East to the West and from the South to the North, i.e.,of this translatio imperii in a civilizing key that Hegel made apparent as a means todictate the rules governing the irrevocable processes of peripheralization, delay or ex-ile from history.

Literary and cultural geography should be approached from a standpoint thatwould afford a critical distance toward these forms of the modern tradition of literaryspace, of geoliterature, beginning with the absolute necessity of making them visibleas a first step. Taking consciously the geographic framework as a given element, as anapriori for the historiographic exercise, will give way to an approach to the literatureslinked to the Peninsula from a critical geoliterary perspective. That is, through theconnection of literature to a space and through the tensions, conflicts, dualities, hy-bridizations, and different systemic structurizations, and also through the relation-ships of this space with other spaces (European, American, Mediterranean, African,etc.), the understanding of the Peninsula as a location would be made possible A topo-graphic space, more than geometric or even geographic. A space that challenges asmuch its own limiting or containing dimension as its supposed capacity to act as aprinciple of consistency.

But remember also that, as Dionisotti sensed for the Italian case, the geoliteratureof this peninsular space finds itself associated to a specific temporary nature in that thenotions of delay, misoneism, anachronism, interruption abound at times as signs, attimes as testimony to a temporary problematicity stressed from the beginnings by thedifferent historiographic traditions. Maybe it was pertinent to bring to this proposalthe affirmation of Johannes Fabian in his Time and the Other8, when he assured withregard to the colonial order that “geopolitics has its ideological foundations in chrono-politics”. Subtracting this consideration from the mirroring dialectics between Occi-dentalism and Orientalism, the examination of the chronopolitical representation of

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7 See Jo Labanyi. “Nation, Narration, Naturalization: A Barthesian Critique of the 1898 Genera-tion.” New Hispanisms: Literature, Culture, Theory. Eds. Mark I. Millington and Paul JulianSmith. Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1994. 127–149. p. 130. See also James Derrick Sidaway.“Iberian Geopolitics.” Geopolitical Traditions. A Century of Geopolitical Thought. Eds. KlausDodds and David Atkinson. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. 118–149.

8 Johannes Fabian. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Colum-bia University Press, 1983.

Peninsular literatures without a doubt has to open a way for the analysis of the rela-tionship with notions such as European literature or among the Peninsular literaturesthemselves.

It is the case, then, of fixing a perspective and highlighting matters that would notbe apprehensible otherwise. By the way, this consideration drives us to a new crucialaspect of the project: the one that is based on the certainty that, in the present momentof literary studies, there is not a possible history of literature – especially if it is com-pared – unless propounded in the form of a revisio. We cannot be any longer mere lit-erary cartographers in search of extending our old maps with new and previously un-known extensions. On the other hand, one of the most dangerous naiveties in this re-spect is that of Adamism; that is, to situate ourselves before history as someone whodiscovers a new world without paying attention to the context of earlier and contem-porary discourses that have forged it. The critical and historiographical discourse is,as we all know, a constituent element of some of the fundamental facts that have to beconsidered by any project about the literatures of the Iberian Peninsula. Because atleast in our case, as decisive as the complexity of the Peninsular literary production isthe thickness and the capacity of incidence of the critical and historiographic dis-courses that surround it and convert it in an object, let us say recognizable, althoughnot always consistent in all its extremes.

Not long ago Miguel Tamen called attention with special sharpness and outstand-ing derridean resonances to the etymological and semantic relationships between theterms revisio, theoria, and ghost9. A revisio is a vision that returns (and visio, vision,has also the sense of ‘apparition’ or ‘ghost’), which could be also understood as muchas a return to an object in order to be reconsidered in a new light, as the appearancefrom another world or another time of an image somewhat erased from actual pres-ence, like the revenu of the French language. In our case, this historiographical projecthas also both senses. On the one hand, it strives to put in a new light traditional ap-proaches that are far from satisfactory; for example, the historiographic conception ofSpanish literature. On the other hand, former visions many times forgotten about Pen-insular literatures, but that acquire, submitted to new demands, a surprising dialogisticcapacity will be revived without a doubt by the project. It could be the case of somehistoriographic projects dating from the Enlightment, like that of the unfinished His-tory literaria de España (1766–1791) of the Padres Rodríguez Mohedano, whose cri-teria of coherence, as happened with Tiraboschi in the Italian case, was not linguisticor national, but strictly geographical; or like the proposal made by Menéndez Pelayo(1878) regarding what he called Spanish literature: a plurilingual and plurinationalproject, in which the correlation between literatures, languages, and nations was re-fused, although preserving an image of space as an intrinsic principle of coherenceand identity, Latin-Christian in this case.

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9 Miguel Tamen. “Ghosts Revised. An Essay on Literary History.” A Revisionary History of Por-tuguese Literature. Eds. Miguel Tamen and Helena C. Buescu. New York and London: Garland,1999. xi–xxi.

There is still a last question that cannot be avoided, given that it could well consti-tute one of the basic hypothesis for the project: that of an interliterarity of a Peninsularbase. In more precise words, that of the possible understanding of the Peninsular liter-atures as an interliterary community in the sense that Dionýz Ðurišin conferred to thisnotion. As soon as is estimated, even if superficially, the possibility of an interliteraryPeninsular community meets some relevant obstacles, however. An instance would bethe notable disregard on the part of literature in Castilian toward the rest, even in theperspective of its process of historiographic constitution as Spanish literature, inwhich attitudes like the one described of Menéndez Pelayo are – in spite of its limita-tions – exceptional. Another factor that would question this work hypothesis has to dowith the direction that the intersystemic affinities postulated from the different literarytraditions adopt. I refer to the images projected from a given literary system regardingthe situations that are understood as parallel or, in any case, similar, which aim mostlyat directions diverging from that of a presumed Iberian community. Let us think of theimaginary referent that Brittany means for Galician literature, or of the connectionsestablished by means of intersystemic anthologies, in which different literary systemsare implicitly put in parallel, though it be contrastive, shaping analogies between liter-atures like Galician, and, in order to stick to real situations, the Icelandic or Balkan lit-eratures. It goes without saying that the referent is also Peninsular or Iberian on quite anumber of occasions, but it is not less that this community does not finish to prevail inan unequivocal mode. Let us put forward a case like that of Basque literature, forwhich María José Olaziregi reinstated recently its characterization as an island, whilereminding of such surprising data as that, at the height of 1997, only fifty books inEuskera had been rendered into other languages10.

All this leads, evidently, to dismiss from the beginning the idea of interliterarycommunity as an environment harmonious, fluid or based on the homogeneity and sta-bility of the connections; and oblige us to insist, on the contrary, on its volatility, fra-gility, and on the frequent unilaterality of the relationships of dependence. Whateverthe situation may be, a notable skepticism should usher the notion of an Iberianinterliterary community, at least as long as the prevalence of the interliterary relation-ships between components over those of a national order is accepted as one of the dis-tinguishing traits of the very conception of interliterary community according toÐurišin11.

But, in any case, the notions of interliterariness and interliterary community putforward by Ðurišin and some of his followers present attractive methodological mer-its. As for example, the emphasis on situating literary dynamics on a transethnic and

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10 María José Olaziregi Alustiza. “La novela vasca: Márgenes, centros y demás delimitacionestopológicas.” Ínsula, 654 (2001): 17–20. p. 18.

11 Dionýz Ðurišin. “Le comunità interletterarie: una categoria fondamentale del processointerletterario.” pp. 67–68.

transnational basis, in addition to the insistence on the geoliterary development as awhole12.

It is also good to remember the necessity to consider from a methodological pointof view that “imagined communities” (B. Anderson) do not have a reason to be onlynational. And moreover it helps to realize that definitions of identity are never posedexclusively on an autonomous foundation, although at times it may seem so.

It is a further factor in favour of the notion of interliterarity the fact that it clearlyappears as an effort to overtake the straight force that has come to impose the distinc-tion between major and minor literatures in a European context. Something thatshould be kept in mind as much from the internal perspective of the Iberian Peninsulaas in the relationship of this environment and Europe or other referents of totalizingambition. The decisive question would be now that of how to shape in practice allthese aspects. In this respect, the preliminary task of considering the situation of theIberian Peninsula in the tradition of comparative literary historiography – somethingquite different to the vindication of the universality of some of its writers – and its rolein the constitution of the idea of European literatures seems to impose itself, togetherwith the urge to deepen into the guidelines that have led the historiographic constitu-tion of the different Peninsular literatures. This should be part of the analysis, pre-cisely because of the revisionist condition that we have been demanding. But perhapsthe most compelling demand of all is the necessity to carry out a comparative historyof literature that would be neither historicist nor comparative, even if comparatist inintention and profoundly historical in its considerations. That is, this comparative his-tory of literature should not compare predefined literatures and it should not enforcethe periodological rule as a methodological support, but it should involve itself in thedisciplinary tradition of comparative literature and draw the pertinent consequencesfrom the aknowledgment of the ultimate historicity of its object.

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12 Marián Gálik. “Interliterariness as a Concept in Comparative Literature.” CLCWeb: Compara-tive Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal, 2.4 (2000). http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb00-4/galik2-00.html