Selected Writings of Andrés Bello

by Andrés Bello, Frances López-Morillas, Iván Jaksic (Editor)

Overview

Andrés Bello was a towering figure in nineteenth-century Latin America, as influential and as famous there as Thomas Jefferson is in the United States. Poet, politician, educator, essayist, philosopher, he wielded astonishing influence and played a major role in shaping the national identities of newly independent Latin American countries. He held several key government positions, authored Chile's civil code, launched several periodicals, wrote prodigiously on a vast array of subjects, and implemented important educational reforms.
Available here in English for the first time, the Selected Writings of Andrés Bello, edited by Iván Jaksic, gathers wide-ranging selections that explore such subjects as grammar and philology, constitutional reform, the aims of education, international relations, historiography, Latin and Roman Law, government and society, and many others. The Selected Writings of Andrés Bello gives us a generous sampling of a gifted thinker who must be included in any understanding of the origins and development of Latin America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195105469
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/17/1998
Series:	Library of Latin America
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.48(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

Iván Jaksic is Associate Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame.
Frances M. López-Morillas's many translations include Medieval Heritage of Mexico and Spain, by Luis Weckmann and Understanding Spain, by Julián Marias.

Editorial Reviews

"Available in English for the first time, the greatest essays and speeches of the 19th-century Latin American educator, politician, and scholar, a leading figure in building a humanistic post-colonial tradition in Latin America."—Kirkus Reviews

"Andrés Bello stands out as an intellectual giant whose projects and achievements are relevant to the whole of the Americas."—The Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher

Andrés Bello stands out as an intellectual giant whose projects and achievements are relevant to the whole of the Americas.

Wall Street Journal

Available in English for the first time, the greatest essays and speeches of the 19th-century Latin American educator, politician, and scholar, a leading figure in building a humanistic post-colonial tradition in Latin America.

The pieces included here cover a range of subjects, from public education to historiography to language studies. Bello (17811865), who was born in Venezuela, spent many years abroad. While living in Europe, Bello launched several journals intended for a Latin American audience, focusing on the means of constructing the region's new nations. His goal, presented in the prospectus included here, was to aid Latin America in "completing its process of civilization," a task he pursued for the next 40 years, especially after returning to Latin America. His epic poem "Allocution to Poetry" praises the continent's natural beauty and stimulated others to pursue a distinctly Latin American tradition in letters. His essay on Spanish grammar rejects the dependence on Latin in the pedagogy of the day and stresses the application of logic to teaching, understanding, and applying grammatical rules. Writing as the rector of the Colegio de Santiago, and later as the first rector of the University of Chile, Bello stresses the importance of public education in the construction of a working democracy, and argues that morality ("inseparable from religion") must be a key theme in education. As a member of the Chilean Congress, Bello drafted the nation's civil code, which attempts to clarify issues surrounding property and contracts in the context of a new civil society. Bello, a reveler in archives, passionately argues that history is at its core "the science of humanity," yet another way of supplying nations with vital ideas.

As a teacher he provided an apt example of what academic disciplines could contribute to society. And as a writer and thinker he did a good deal to wean Latin America off its stance of intellectual servility to the Old World.

Kirkus Reviews