Technique and humanity of stylistics, “Dámaso Alonso and contemporary criticism", by Juan Luis Alborg: presentation and first exegesis of an un published text

Abstract

The present study ponders Juan Luis Alborg's critical position and thought on Literary Theory, fundamentally expressed in his extensive monograph Sobre crítica y críticos (1991), for which he will dwell on an earlier text of his, an un published in Spanish, on stylistics through the seminal contribution of Dámaso Alonso. The following pages, then, will contextualize and analytically expose the keys of the conference «Dámaso Alonso y la crítica contemporánea» (1974), and will introduce its first edition in Spanish, where the historian of literature underlines the technique and humanity of the great Spanish theoretician by comparing it with European theory in its fundamental critical movements of the 20th century. This conference is configured as a major precedent for understanding Alborg's extensive volume on criticism, which constitutes one of the most incisive reflections within Hispanism on the diverse theoretical trajectories that occurred in Western theory in the last century.