Keywords
Arte, Cavanilles, Epistemología, España, Humboldt, Narratio, Polimatía, Retórica, Textualidad, Viajes (10 words)
Abstract
Epistolary activity dates to Ancient Greece in affinity with the Roman tradition in which the missive was the most efficient means of communication at a distance. An erudite knowledge of the subject was required since the content would be recorded in posterity. Polymathy and epistemology were therefore required in daily practice of writing encyclicals from the society of Medieval era up to the pinnacle of the epistolary genre during Humanism. The letter, therefore, implied the fact that the writer was out from the territory of the point of departure and the recipient of the correspondence was distant. This exegesis focuses on the textual legacy of Alexander von Humboldt, who, given his wisdom as a naturalist and humanist, sketches in the letter sent to Kurl Ludwig Willdenow as a literary portrait the vivid illustration of the ecological contour of the Catalan and Valencian regions. The narrative images printed also on Cavanilles’ observations and on Humboldt’s cartography are in dialogue—in the form of a travel chronicle— with the pictorial works La sierra de las Agujas and Paisaje de Cataluña, respectively. The methodology applied consists of the analysis of the textuality of Cavanilles’ observations and Humboldt’s epistolary that focuses on the protagonism of nature in the historical distance of time and space. To this end, careful attention has been dedicated to the rhetorical premise of narratio inscribed in Humboldt’s letter, which converges graphically with the landscape of Catalonia and Valencia due to his travels made on the European continent and throughout Spain.
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Paisaje de Cataluña y Valencia. Polimatía y epistemología en el sello epistolar de Alexander von Humboldt en concordancia con las observaciones de Antonio José Cavanilles
Epistolary activity dates to Ancient Greece in affinity with the Roman tradition in which the missive was the most efficient means of communication at a distance. An erudite knowledge of the subject was required since the content would be recorded in posterity. Polymathy and epistemology were therefore required in daily practice of writing encyclicals from the society of Medieval era up to the pinnacle of the epistolary genre during Humanism. The letter, therefore, implied the fact that the writer was out from the territory of the point of departure and the recipient of the correspondence was distant. This exegesis focuses on the textual legacy of Alexander von Humboldt, who, given his wisdom as a naturalist and humanist, sketches in the letter sent to Kurl Ludwig Willdenow as a literary portrait the vivid illustration of the ecological contour of the Catalan and Valencian regions. The narrative images printed also on Cavanilles’ observations and on Humboldt’s cartography are in dialogue—in the form of a travel chronicle— with the pictorial works La sierra de las Agujas and Paisaje de Cataluña, respectively. The methodology applied consists of the analysis of the textuality of Cavanilles’ observations and Humboldt’s epistolary that focuses on the protagonism of nature in the historical distance of time and space. To this end, careful attention has been dedicated to the rhetorical premise of narratio inscribed in Humboldt’s letter, which converges graphically with the landscape of Catalonia and Valencia due to his travels made on the European continent and throughout Spain.