Renæssanceforum 8 • 2012

Felipe González Vega
Latín, nacionalismo y arte alusiva en la historiografía de Antonio de Nebrija

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As well as a fresh study of the historiographical theory presented by Antonio de Nebrija in his Diuinatio in scribenda historia, this essay reconsiders the form and meaning of allusion employed in it. Allusion there operates as an indirect testimony of the historical author's aims, as they are reflected in his personal animosity towards his opponent L. Marineo Sículo receiving the position of royal chronicler. Nebrija's intertextuality is strictly limited to the ordering of phrases or syntactic sequences, and there are no flights of metaphor other than an illustration of the eloquence and passion for narrative which he has employed in his historiographical writing. His priority is not truth with regard to the achievements of the Catholic monarchy, but the production of a deliberately subjective propaganda for the empire: the more efficacious and persuasive it is, the more evidently accomplished is the style in which it is expressed.