Americo Castro Quesada (1885-1972) was a Spanish writer, essayist, philologist and historian. He was also part of the Generation of the 14th or Novecentismo, a movement that emerged in Spain at the beginning of the 20th century, and related to innovations in the arts and literature..
The work of Américo Castro was oriented to the study, analysis and criticism of the works of writers such as Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega and Francisco de Rojas Zorilla. In addition, the writer expressed the importance that religion had in Spain, and the conflict generated by the new Christian or Judeo-convert.
Castro, within his studies on Spain, worked on two aspects: the vital abode and the vividura. The first was related to the action of living and its implications, while the second was the subjectivity of man before said action, together with consciousness.
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Américo Castro was born on May 4, 1885 in Cantagalo, a municipality of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, in the bosom of a Spanish family, specifically from Granada. The first five years of life the essayist lived in the South American country, because his parents had a business there.
In 1890, Américo's parents decided to return to Spain, where he began his educational training. It was in his parents' hometown that Castro studied elementary and high school. Later, in 1904, the writer obtained a degree in law and philosophy and letters at the University of Granada.
Immediately, after graduating, he went to Madrid, where he did his doctorate. There he was a student of Ramón Menéndez Pidal, the renowned historian and philologist. Later, between 1905 and 1907, he made specializations at the Sorbonne University in Paris.
Américo Castro also took academic improvement courses in some institutions in Germany. Later, in 1908, the writer returned to Spain.
Upon his return to Spain, Américo entered military service. Later, together with Pidal, he became closely linked with the Center for Historical Studies, which was in charge of disseminating and developing Spanish culture through research. He also participated in the Institute of Free Education.
In 1910, Castro became director of the lexicography unit of that center. Three years later he participated in the manifesto of José Ortega y Gasset, a text that sought a cultural and intellectual change for Spain. In 1915 he was professor of history of the Spanish language at the University of Madrid.
Américo Castro made friends with intellectuals and artists of the time, among them the writers Benjamín Jarnés, José María de Cossío and Juan Ramón Jiménez. Similarly, he was related to the philosopher and essayist Francisco Giner de los Ríos, who perhaps led him to Krausism.
Product of Castro's relationship with the Krausist idea that God holds the world and makes it go further, even when it is not in it, it is the result of his work with respect to the Generation of 98 and its anti-Catholicism. In fact, the philologist married Carmen Madinaveitia, the daughter of a doctor linked to Krausism.
Américo held several conferences on the European continent during the First World War. He did that while making some posts on the Journal of Spanish Philology, which he helped found. At that time he made an effort to level the philology of his country with that of Europe..
During those years he made the translation of Introduction to Romance Linguistics by the Swiss Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke. As well as an edition of the Leonese fueros in 1916, with the collaboration of the also philologist Federico de Onís. In 1919, Américo Castro wrote the essay Life of Lope de Vega.
Castro made several trips to Europe and America during the 1920s. In 1922 he went to Morocco, with the aim of investigating the Jews who lived there. During that same year, Américo wrote an outstanding introduction to The Trickster of Seville, by Tirso de Molina. In 1923 he visited Argentina and Chile, where he was a university professor.
In 1924, Columbia University in New York invited him as an honorary professor. The following year he developed his study entitled The thought of Cervantes, based on the author's connection to the Renaissance movement. Other important trials were born from this analysis..
The thought and ideals of Américo Castro were aligned with liberalism, in addition to being politically republican. His position led him in 1931 to be ambassador to Germany for a year, and he was also active in letters writing for the newspaper Sun.
In 1936, when the Spanish Civil War broke out, Américo went to the town of San Sebastián to meet his family. That same year he made the decision to go into exile. The writer first arrived in Argentina, and later, in 1937, he went to the United States. Until 1953 he was a professor at the universities of Wisconsin, Texas and Princeton.
During those years in North America he created a school on the study of Hispanic culture, and had as students Stephen Gilman and Russell Sebold, who gave continuity to his thoughts. Upon retirement in 1953, Castro made several trips, giving lectures and conducting research.
During his last years in exile, Américo Castro wrote for cultural magazines such as Freedom of Culture, Horseback Riding Y The sixties. In 1970 he decided to return to Spain, after learning of some family problems.
When he settled in his country, he wrote the essay Spanish, foreign word. The following year he published the study in three volumes: From the Spain that I still did not know. Finally, due to a heart attack, he died on July 25, 1972 in the town of Lloret de Mar. The writer was, at that time, eighty-seven years old..
The work of Américo Castro was framed in the study of the history of Spain and of some of its most important characters. This is how the thought of Miguel de Cervantes placed in a high place, beyond being one of the greatest novelists.
On the other hand, Castro focused on making Hispanic culture known, from grammatical to history. In the same vein, he insisted on the importance that religion had on Spain, especially Muslims and Jews..
His contribution on the subject of religion was to show the contempt or exclusion that literature gave to religious minorities, taking only Catholicism into account. For him the conversions of Jews and Muslims to Christianity were due to fear of segregation, and from there the Catholic monarchy was imposed.
There were two categories or qualities that Américo Castro developed to explain and understand the history of ideas in Spain. First he referred to the vital abode, which was related to space, its opportunities and disadvantages, perceived from the objective and neutral.
Later he developed the vividura, which had to do with the actions of the individual within that universe of possibilities and limitations, that is: the vital abode. The vividura was, according to Américo, the “subjective conscience” of the responsibility of the human being in front of what he is capable of doing.
- Life of Lope de Vega (1919). With the collaboration of the Hispanicist and scholar of the work of Lope de Vega, the American Hugo Rennert.
- The strange element in language (1921).
- Teaching Spanish in Spain (1922).
- Juan de Mal Lara and his vulgar philosophy (1923).
- Language, teaching and literature (1924).
- Don Juan in Spanish literature (1924).
- The new Dictionary of the Spanish Academy (1925).
- The thought of Cervantes (1925).
- Santa Teresa and other essays (1929).
- The prologues to Don Quixote (1941).
- The Hispanic and erasmism (1940-1942).
- The River Plate linguistic peculiarity (1941).
- Antonio de Guevara (1945).
- Spain in its history (1948). Work with editions and modifications with the title of The historical reality of Spain, in 1954, 1962 and 1966.
- Aspects of Hispanic Living (1949).
- Spanish portraits and studies (1956).
- To Cervantes (1957).
- Santiago from Spain (1958).
- Origin, being and existing of the Spanish (1959).
- Of the troubled age (1961).
- La Celestina as a literary contest (1965).
- Cervantes and Spanish chasticisms (1967).
- Spanish, foreign word (1970).
- From the Spain that I still did not know (1971). An extensive edition in three volumes.
- Spaniards on the sidelines (1972).
- Epistolary Américo Castro and Marcel Bataillon 1923-1972. (Posthumous edition 2012).
- They were from Zamora, Salamanca, Ledesma and Alba de Tormes (1916).
- The Isidro by Lope de Vega.
- The Dorotea by Lope de Vega.
- Each one what he has to do by Francisco Rojas Zorrilla.
- Naboth's girl by Francisco Rojas Zorrilla.
- The condemned as distrustful by Tirso de Molina.
- The Trickster of Seville (1922) by Tirso de Molina.
- The shameful one in the palace by Tirso de Molina.
- The life of the Buscón by Francisco de Quevedo.
- Introduction to Romance Linguistics by Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke.
- The thought of Cervantes and other Cervantes studies.
- Cervantes and Spanish casticisms and other Cervantes studies.
- Spain in its history. Essays on history and literature.
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