Argentine Academy of Letters

Argentine Academy of Letters (AAL) is the institution responsible for studying and advising on the use of the Spanish language in the Argentine Republic. Since its establishment, on 13 August 1931 in Buenos Aires, maintains ties with the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), with the other Hispano-American Academies, the North American Academy of the Spanish Language and the Philippine, and with the Association of Spanish Language Academies, with headquarters in Madrid; since 1999 he has officially held the title of correspondent.

In its relations with the RAE, the regime of "associated" until November 1999; from that year he passed to the category of correspondent of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language.

It is currently made up of 24 regular members, chosen for having excelled in studies related to language or literature; they make up the governing body of the Academy, and elect honorary and corresponding scholars.

Purposes

The purpose of the Academy is not limited to recording the peculiarities of the Spanish language, as it is spoken in the Río de la Plata region. It also intends to carry out regulatory actions regarding its use and stimulate and contribute to literary studies, considered a crucial element of national culture.

Awards

The Academy also regulates national literary awards. Since 1984, it has awarded a prize of the same name to university graduates of the literature major who achieve the highest average in all national universities, as well as the Argentine Academy prize to outstanding authors of narrative, poetry and essays.

History

Background

The most remote antecedents of lexicography in the area of the Río de la Plata go back to a small but rigorous Río de la Plata Lexicon compiled in 1845 by Francisco Javier Muñiz (1845) and another from 1860 prepared by Juan María Gutiérrez for the Frenchman Martín de Moussy.

On July 9, 1873, a group of Argentine intellectuals, especially from Buenos Aires, founded the Argentine Academy of Sciences and Letters in Buenos Aires. Presided over by the poet Martín Coronado, the Academy did not have the exclusive task of studying the language; Rather, he dedicated himself to various branches of knowledge —from law and science to art, literature and history— in his involvement in the national culture. He did try to compile a Dictionary of the Argentine Language, a task for which several thousand words and phrases were collected. However, upon the dissolution of the Academy in 1879, the project remained unfinished.

Of this work, which included studies carried out by specialists about professional slang and research on localisms in the interior of the country, only a dozen words published in the ephemeral organ of the Academy, El Literary Silver. In 1876, the same newspaper published a Collection of American Voices, the work of Carlos Manuel de Trelles, with some 300 voices, which had been incorporated into the project. However, the initiative would bear fruit at least in terms of establishing the need for an entity dedicated to the study of the local language. When, in the 1880s, under the program for the creation of Correspondent Academies gestated by the Royal Spanish Academy, invitations were issued to various prominent Argentine intellectuals to form it —among them Ángel Justiniano Carranza, Luis Domínguez, Vicente Fidel López, Bartolomé Mitre, Pastor Obligado, Carlos María Ocantos, Ernesto Quesada, Vicente Quesada and Carlos Guido Spano—others —such as Juan Bautista Alberdi, Juan María Gutiérrez and Juan Antonio Argerich— doubted the advisability of accepting the Spanish project, suspecting an attempt to restore the culture of the peninsula. Argerich argued that it would constitute «a branch, a vassal of Spanish imperialism», and counter-proposed the creation of «an Argentine Academy of the Castilian language» that would generate its own dictionary. Pastor Obligado, by contrast, publicly argued in favor of establishing a corresponding academy.

In 1903 Estanislao Zeballos, in the preliminary study he wrote for the Notes to Spanish in Argentina by Ricardo Monner Sans, unsuccessfully proposed the then RAE correspondents —Bartolomé Miter, Vicente Fidel López, Vicente G. Quesada, Carlos Guido Spano, Rafael Obligado, Calixto Oyuela, Ernesto Quesada and himself—form an Argentine section of the Academy. It was not until seven years later, and through the efforts of the Marquis of Gerona, Eugenio Sellés, who arrived in Argentina as part of the entourage that accompanied the Infanta Isabel María Francisca de Borbón to the festivities of the nation's centenary, that these They would found the first Argentine Academy of Language. Of the eighteen academics that this would consist of, Vicente Quesada and Calixto Oyuela were elected president and secretary respectively for life.

The plan of activities that Obligado devised for this consisted not only of the task of correcting and expanding the local lexicon contained in the dictionary of the Spanish Academy, but also agreeing with the other Latin American academies on the coordination of a registry of the locutions premises for the preparation of a separate Spanish-American vocabulary. With this he sought to avoid doubts about the nationalist and purist zeal of the peninsulars, which had already caused friction with other correspondent academies. The Dictionary of Americanisms would be open to use by the RAE, but would in principle constitute a separate undertaking.

The program, expanded at the request of Zeballos, was joined by the new members of the Academy, Samuel Lafone Quevedo, Osvaldo Magnasco, José Matienzo, José María Ramos Mejía and Enrique Rivarola. However, the lack of political support and mutual misgivings with the RAE would lead to the prompt dissolution of the organization, which was unable to publish its investigations.

Foundation

On August 13, 1931, the de facto president José Félix Uriburu decreed the creation of the Argentine Academy of Letters. The name change responded to an additional emphasis on the dissemination and promotion of literature over interest in the language. This sought to define and strengthen the "spiritual physiognomy of the country", using the resources of narration, poetry and especially theater to manage a cultural model. Oyuela was entrusted with the presidency of the body, also made up of Enrique Banchs, Joaquín Castellanos, Atilio Chiappori, Juan Carlos Dávalos, Leopoldo Díaz, Juan Pablo Echagüen, Alfredo Ferrerira, Gustavo Franceschi, Manuel Gálvez, Leopoldo Herrera, Carlos Ibarguren, Arturo Marasso, Gustavo Martínez Zuviría, Clemente Ricci and Juan Bautista Terán. The Academy held the position of associated to the RAE. The support that his previous incarnation had lacked was not spared; a room of the old National Library on Mexico Street was used for the weekly meeting of the body, while the project of the then senator Matías Sánchez Sorondo to acquire the Errázuriz Palace to move the Academy there, together with the National Academy of Fine Arts, the National Museum of Decorative Art and the National Commission of Culture was attended. In January 1937 the acquisition of the property was approved, although the transfer would not become effective until 1944.

Institutional changes since its creation by Uriburu have been few; since 1935 each armchair of the twenty-four bears the name of a classic Argentine writer. Since 1940, the emblem of the Academy has been an Ionic column (according to the design of the plastic Alfredo Guido), topped with the motto recta sustenta. After the coup The military coup of 1955 —the dictatorship calling itself Revolución Libertadora headed by Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, began a policy of persecution against journalists, athletes, politicians and intellectuals related to Peronism and other parties, among them were persecuted members of the Argentine Academy of Letters.

In 1999 the Academy finally passed to occupy the position of correspondent of the RAE. In 2001, it celebrated its seventieth anniversary by organizing an exhibition at the National Library, which exhibited documents and iconography of its history, as well as part of the documentary archive.

Jorge Luis Borges Library

"Jorge Luis Borges" Library of the Argentine Academy of Letters, view from the staircase.

The Library of the Academy was inaugurated in 1932. It functioned in dependencies of the National Library between 1932 and 1946, and from 1947 it moved to its current headquarters in the Errázuriz Palace. Thanks to the legacy of Juan José García Velloso, in 1936 3,000 volumes of Latin American literature and theater were added. The Alberto Cosito Muñoz library, acquired in 1937, and issues of the Revue Hispanique and the publications of the Society of Spanish Bibliophiles, complemented the initial item. Among its collections, the Egyptology collection by Abraham Rosenvasser stands out, and the great collection of first editions of the XIX century by Miguel Lermon. Its collection specialized in works of Linguistics, Argentine, Spanish and Hispano-American Literature is one of the most important in the Argentine Republic.

The Library of the Argentine Academy of Letters has in its bibliographical collection the funds and legacy of: Juan José and Enrique García Velloso (3341 vol.), Rafael Alberto Arrieta (4000 vol.), Alfredo de la Guardia (3000 vol.), Abraham Rosenvasser (2,400 vol.), Celina Sabor de Cortazar (1,000 vol.), Ofelia Kovacci (2,000 vol.), Marietta Ayerza and Alfredo González Garaño (4,000 vol.), José Luis Trenti Rocamora (23,000 vol..), Miguel Lermon (12,000 vol.), Juan Manuel Corcuera (2,400 vol.), Manuel Gálvez (1,685 vol.).

Today, the Library has almost 130,000 volumes and an important newspaper library, with three thousand titles of periodicals, totaling around 16,000 volumes, making it an outstanding research center. It also has 2,000 ancient volumes (edited between 1515 and 1801).

He has four great epistolaries: Manuel Gálvez, Roberto Giusti, Atilio Chiáppori and Victoria Ocampo. The first three can be consulted in full text at the Library of the Argentine Academy of Letters. In Cervantes Virtual you can also find the full text of the gaucho literature collection, the travel books commenting on the region, and the historical documents collected by Pedro de Angelis.

Department of Philological Research

A Philological Research Department was nominally founded in 1946, with the intention of developing research and technical advice. In 1955, by presidential decree, it was merged with the Instituto de la Tradición to form a National Institute of Philology and Folklore. Its work was regulated in 1961, but it was not until 1966 that, under the direction of Carlos Ronchi March, the task of preparing lexicographic files and reports was systematized. The department currently advises the plenary of the Academy, prepares observations and additions for the RAE, and maintains files and documentation on local locutions.

Posts

Since it was founded, the academy published a quarterly Bulletin, of philological and lexicographical interests. The conservative line and akin to the peninsular academy was maintained from the first issue, in which Terán denied the existence of a "Argentine language" and he emphasized the continuity of River Plate Castilian with Iberian. The interests of establishing and selecting a normative corpus for the national language were also evidenced in the "Bibliography of Spanish in Argentina", published since this issue, seeking to compile a selection of the valuable works of the national literary production, and in the activities of protest and correction of journalistic, advertising or administrative expressions in disagreement with the standardized language. Circulars were sent to newspapers and radio stations, as well as to municipal and national government entities. The Bulletin of the Argentine Academy of Letters (BAAL) continues to be published to this day.

In 1941 he began a collection of compilations and critical works on "Clásicos Argentinos", of which sixteen volumes have been published. Starting in 1946, a collection of "Academic Studies" was added to this, which combines the translation of foreign bibliography with national critical and biographical studies, and in 1976 finally a series of "Linguistic and Philological Studies& #34;.

In addition to the above, since 1947 BAAL has occasionally been accompanied by volumes of homage to prominent authors. From 1975 its publication stabilized, reaching 25 volumes to date. Outside the usual collections, several volumes have been published, including a Dictionary of Americanisms by Augusto Malaret, the first volume of the unfinished Diccionario etimológico del castellano usual by Leopoldo Lugones, the proceedings of the IV Congress of the Academies of the Spanish Language, a Lexicon of educated speech in Buenos Aires, a volume of Frequent language doubts, a Record of the speech of the Argentines, twelve volumes of Agreements about the language established by the academy and some literary works. In the project is a comprehensive Dictionary of Argentine speaking that records the cultured use of the language in the country.

Number of academics in order of seniority

Academic chairs: historical journey

The Argentine Academy of Letters distinguishes its members (called academics) as numerary, honorary and corresponding members.

Cash

The full members of the Argentine Academy of Letters have been:

Corresponding academics

Residents abroad

• Alberto Manguel (United States)

Residents in the country