CULTURAL HIERARCHIES AND THE GLOBAL CANON: GERMAN HISPANISM, TRANSLATION AND GENDER IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Abstract

German Hispanism emerged as part of the nineteenth-century boom in philology. The German Romantics in particular set about rediscovering the literature of Spain’s Golden Age, placing imperial Spain at the heart of the conservative nation-building of the late Napoleonic period and feeding into Goethe’s rather more cosmopolitan notion of ‘Weltliteratur’ as Spain emerged as an orientalized ‘Other’, ripe for exploitation as a source of inspiration and paradigm. The intricacies of the philological networks which facilitated this development are only now beginning to emerge, revealing what is often an imbalanced transcultural relationship built on a hierarchy of cultures. In a troubling instance of historical synchronicity, that hierarchy is underpinned by another which sees the secondary role assigned to women in the nineteenth century perpetuated by contemporary scholarship: despite a growing interest in the cultural transfer between Germany and Spain, to date the role of women, in particular translators, in German Hispanism has not been explored. This article will explore the relationship between German philology and Spain in the nineteenth century in order to uncover the substantial role played by women and attempt to redress the balance which remains weighted in favour of male philologists.