Comparative literature
has rarely been a major theme among contemporary Spanish essayists, perhaps
because it involves the complex methodology of a specialty that covers a great
number of texts and combines various disciplines that range from human and social
sciences to philosophy. We are therefore delighted to present one of the most
ambitious and conscientious essays written in Spain in recent years, for its
author, Claudio Guillén, is an
authority on this internationally recognised subject.
Both
the curious reader and the specialist will be lured by simply glancing at the
index of Multiples moradas (Multiple Dwellings). Its pages
are a compound of important figures, tendencies and styles, yet the critical
eye of the author has also been capable of illuminating specific areas of the
humanities: the pain of exile in literature, the emergence of the pictorial
notion of the landscape, the idea of obscenity in classical erotica, the
evolution of the epistolary genre, the birth of literary nationalisms, and so
on.
“I am concerned with literary history, I am
concerned with the form it adopts in our minds”, writes Guillén in the prologue. “I believe this form to be a common
experience, which, however meandering and wild is, I insist, shared by many
others, and has been developed within many fields by historians, critics and
investigators, not all of whom are contemporary, but whom I most admire and to
whom I am most indebted”.
Claudio Guillén (1924) studied in France and the United
States. During World War II he enlisted as a voluntary soldier in the army of General Charles de Gaulle. He
then became professor at various North American universities such as Princeton,
UCLA and Harvard, where for many years he was director of the department of
comparative literature. He then returned to Spain as head of department in the
Autonomous and Pompeu Fabra Universities in
Barcelona. He has been a visiting professor in Germany, Italy, and Brazil,
among other countries. In his numerous articles, such as Literature
as System (1971), Entre lo
uno y lo diverso (Between the One and the Diverse), 1985, El primer
Siglo de Oro (The First Golden Age), 1988,
and Teorías de la Historia Literaria (Theories of Literary History), 1989, his main themes have always been the novel and
poetry of the 16th and 20th centuries, as well as and the theories of genre and of literary history.