Gustavo San Román

The Rise of Modern Latin American Literary Studies in the UK: a questionnaire to Early Practitioners

When in 1981 I gained a place as an undergraduate to read Linguistics and Spanish at Nottingham University, the main item on the pre-sessional reading list was Spain: A Companion to Spanish Studies , ed. P. E. Russell (1973), and during our first year Professor Brian Tate was fond of reminding us to keep reading it. This was good advice, as the Companion was indeed a thorough source of information for undergraduates and should be hailed as a fine piece of British Hispanism. It is also a significant landmark in the rise of Latin American literary studies in the UK. In fact, its role can best be perceived by placing that volume in the company of its original predecessor and perfect namesake, edited by E. Allison Peers (1929 and later editions up to 1968), and the more recent The Companion to Hispanic Studies , edited by Catherine Davies (2002). From their titles alone the reader can perceive an evolution from the centrality in Hispanism of Spain in the pioneering text and in its first sequel to its dilution in the latest reincarnation. The change can also be detected in the choice of the more recent editor, Catherine Davies, who unlike her very eminent but strictly Iberianist predecessors, is a rare example of a British Hispanist working more or less equally in Peninsular and Latin American culture. A look inside the two volumes readily indicates that in Allison Peers’ work there is no chapter devoted to Latin America, and only the merest of passing mentions elsewhere: there is one reference in the index to ‘South America, dialects of’ (after a description of Andalusian Spanish it is added that ‘many of [these features] are characteristic of South-American Spanish’, 10); two references to Rubén Darı́o, only one of some substance (27, 179); another to Spanish-American literature in general (which turns out to be to