Información sobre el texto
Título del texto editado:
Character of Italian and Spanish Style
Autor del texto editado:
Hallam, Henry
Título de la obra:
Introduction to the Literature of Europe, in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth centuries,
vol. 1
Autor de la obra:
Hallam, Henry
Edición:
London:
John Murray,
1837
Character of Italian and Spanish Style
The style of some other Italian and Spanish writers, Castiglione, Sperone, Machiavel, Guevara, and Spanish Oliva, has been already adverted to when the subject of their writings was before us; and it would be tedious to dwell upon them again in this point of view. The Italians have been accustomed to associate almost every kind of excellence with the word cinquecento. They extol the elegant style and fine taste of those writers. But Andrès has remarked with no injustice, that if we find purity, correctness, and elegance of expression in the chief prose writers of this century, we cannot but also acknowledge an empty prolixity of periods, a harsh involution of words and clauses, a jejune and weary some circuity of sentences, with a striking deficiency of thought. “Let us admit the graces of mere language in the famous authors of this period; but we must own them to be far from models of eloquence, so tedious and languid as they are.” "The Spanish writers of the same century, he says afterwards, nourished as well as the Italian with the milk of antiquity, transfused the spirit and vigour of these ancients into their own compositions, not with the servile imitation of the others, nor seeking to arrange their phrases and round their periods, the source of languor and emptiness, so that the best Spanish prose is more flowing and harmonious than the contemporary Italian.
GRUPO PASO (HUM-241)
FFI2014-54367-C2-1-R FFI2014-54367-C2-2-R
2018
M Luisa Díez, Paloma Centenera
