El Quintiliano del XIXespañol, moralista y "decimonónico"

Abstract

It is in the nineteenth century, a period influenced by a general European climate of anti-rhetoricism, that the first Spanish translation of Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria (appeared in 1799) is widely read. The first Spanish handbooks of history of Latin literature are also published along the century: in this paper, we study the treatment received by Quintilian in seven among such handbooks (works by Terradillos, Camus, Diaz, Costanzo, Villar y Garcia, Gonzalez Garbin and Alvarez Amandi). The authors of the handbooks repeatedly insist on Quintilian’s Spanish origin within claims of national pride, they highly appreciate his role as defender of the values of traditional eloquence against ‘degenerated’ innovations of his time, and they underline everything in the Institutio which connects with nineteenth century morality