Américo Castro's precursor role in cervantism: reflections on his work

Abstract

Our work focuses on central aspects present in the studies that Américo Castro devoted to Cervantes. In this sense, the starting point will be the certainty that Cervantism as a critical current owes its emergence to the foundational work of Américo Castro: El pensamiento de Cervantes [1925] (1971). From this moment on, Cervantes and his creation begin to be studied in a new light. This work gives its imprint to the first stage of Américo Castro’s Cervantism, in principle, differentiated from the second, corresponding to the 1940s onwards. These two stages could be established on the basis of the period that precedes the author’s exile and the one after it, corresponding both to his historical and literary studies and, particularly, to these of Cervantes. In the first place, our study attempts to contextualize Américo Castro’s Cervantism within the framework of his general historical and sociocultural postulates, as well as to establish the relationship of continuity existing between those two differentiated stages. Likewise, we will highlight the pioneering work of Américo Castro regarding his consideration of Cervantes’ work as an integral part of the conversos’s literature. According to my view, it is precisely this daring and innovative advance –that of a new and necessary critical category for the Golden Ages literature: conversos’s literature–, the one that constitutes one of the fundamental and enriching contributions of Américo Castro’s work. And this contribution is largely due to his lucid approach and study of Cervantes’ work. Américo Castro has taught us to read Cervantes between the lines, and through such fissures, to rediscover and reevaluate the history and literature of Spain in its many tones and chiaroscuros.