In the centenary of Menéndez Pelayo

Abstract

This coming May 19th, a hundred years will have elapsed since the death of Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo (1856-1912). Such a circumstance offers us a good opportunity to appreciate his entire work with a wide ranging and considered perspective, exempt of the hagiographic panegyrics or denigratory reprobations which have frequently been used to refer to it. As is the case with any man’s work, there are in Menéndez Pelayo’s oeuvre lights, shades, and personal as well as collective determining factors. But above all, we are not dealing with a man devoid of intellectual substrate, nor is his oeuvre mediocre and ephemeral; rather, his production was vast, and many are those who have turned – and still turn – to it, sometimes even without clearly stating it, to document a historical source or to emit an aesthetic judgment.