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Mateo Alemán's Problem with Spelling

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Mark D. Johnston
Mark D. Johnston*
Affiliation:
Iowa City, Iowa
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Abstract

Mateo Alemán's Ortografía castellana ‘Castilian Orthography’ (Mexico City, 1609) is one of many little-studied Renaissance treatises on correct spelling. It offers a modest scheme for reforming the representation of spoken Spanish sounds in writing, argued with elaborate artifice and based especially on the claim that written letters communicate thanks to inherent Pythagorean harmonies. The treatise includes a full illustration of these reforms in an appendix called the “Problem,” which tells how two courtiers inconclusively debate whether speech or writing possesses “greater excellence.” By offering arguments composed entirely of topoi, establishing a rhetorical paradox, and employing devices of admiratio, the “Problem” achieves a fusion of “intersubjectivity” and “intertextuality” that identifies as a single reading experience the wonder of the paradox posed with the success of the improved spelling.

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Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 103 , Issue 5 , October 1988 , pp. 759 - 769
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1988

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