Geographies of Philological Knowledge
Postcoloniality and the Transatlantic National Epic
"Geographies of Philological Knowledge" examines the relationship between medievalism and colonialism in the nineteenth-century Hispanic American context through the striking case of the Creole Andres Bello (1781-1865), a Venezuelan grammarian, editor, legal scholar, and politician, and his lifelong philological work on the medieval heroic narrative that would later become Spain's national epic, the "Poem of the Cid". Nadia R. Altschul combs Bello's study of the poem and finds throughout it evidence of a "coloniality of knowledge".
Altschul reveals how, during the nineteenth century, the framework for philological scholarship established in and for core European nations – France, England, and especially Germany – was exported to Spain and Hispanic America as the proper way of doing medieval studies. She argues that the global designs of European philological scholarship are conspicuous in the domain of disciplinary historiography, especially when examining the local history of a Creole Hispanic American like Bello, who is neither fully European nor fully alien to European culture. Altschul likewise highlights Hispanic America's intellectual internalization of coloniality and its understanding of itself as an extension of Europe.
A timely example of interdisciplinary history, interconnected history, and transnational study, "Geographies of Philological Knowledge" breaks with previous nationalist and colonialist histories and thus forges a new path for the future of medieval studies.
Reviews
"In this important study, Nadia R. Altschul takes as her point of departure the posthumous 1881 edition by Andres Bello of the Castilian 'national epic', 'Poema de mio Cid' (largely completed by 1834). In her meditation on the 'Creole medievalism' of Bello, Altschul reveals many blind spots in our understandings of postcoloniality and of the historiography of medievalism itself, which, from this study on, cannot be fully understood without reference to the complex role played by Latin American (and, more broadly, American) medievalism – claiming American culture's medieval European origins even as it introduces a 'corrupting' influence into the European medieval-nationalist-philological project – in shaping ideas of nation, of philology, and of the construction of 'the West'. One of the signal achievements of this book is that in it, Altschul show us how scholarship that grows out of personal passion and engagement can open up, not blind us to, the complexities of the subjects that move us" – John Dagenais, University of California, Los Angeles
"Nadia R. Altschul has been responsible for some of the most searching studies of the links between the European premodern past and the colonial enterprise. In her new book, she turns her attention to the Americas and to the central role of Andres Bello in the formation of Latin American cultural identities. The result is a fundamental rethinking of an apparently authoritative humanism, revealing its Creole status. Beneath Altschul's lucid and precise prose is a passionate intelligence. It will be welcomed not only by students of Spanish-language literatures but also by those in postcolonial studies and transnational American studies" – John M. Ganim, author of "Medievalism and Orientalism"
"Like Michelle Warren's 'Creole Medievalism', Nadia R. Altschul's meticulous and comprehensive study belongs among those fascinating second-wave historiographies of academic medievalism that complicate the traditional monocausal connections drawn between medievalists' nationality and the ideologies informing their philological practices. Her brilliant study of the medievalist work of polymath Andres Bello (1781-1865) reveals an example of modern medieval scholarship anchored in a multiplicity of simultaneous subject positions: Creole vis-a-vis Spain; Venezuelan/Chilean vis-a-vis other 'national' American identities; Creole vis-a-vis Amerindians; and Creole vis-a-vis populations of African extraction. Within this web of mutually competing and/or reinforcing positionalities, Altschul questions simplistic binarities such as colonial/postcolonial, empire/colony, and indigenous/criollo and enriches our understanding of the constructed quality of the contested intellectual terrain medievalists still inhabit today" – Richard Utz, Western Michigan University
"'Geographies of Philological Knowledge' forges a compelling narrative of colonial knowledge production that brings together fields usually kept separate – medieval studies, Latin American studies, and postcolonial studies. Nadia R. Altschul remedies the scholarly oversights that have left Spain, criollos, and Amerindians alike out of influential narratives of intellectual history. In this highly readable monograph, Altschul makes philology's global designs patently visible" – Michelle R. Warren, Dartmouth College
