Un gramático, ortógrafo, lexicógrafo, poeta, periodista, traductor y cervantista olvidado de principios del siglo XIX: Manuel Lozano Pérez Ramajo

Abstract

The various activity by Manuel Lozano Pérez Ramajo (1772-1831), liberal clergyman born in Ciudad Rodrigo (Salamanca), trained in Alcalá’s University (1789-1791), free and forced traveler through Spain, Europe and Africa, grammarien, orthographer, lexicographer, Cervantist and translator, but also poet and journalist, has not traditionally attended in the Historioghaphy of Spanish Linguistics. His textbook for teaching Spanish to Germans, Theoretisch-Praktische Lehre der Spanischen Sprache mit der wörtlichen interlinearen Uebersetzung der Beyspiele und Sprache (Leipzig: Schwickert, 1806), is his only piece of work somewhat studied, but it remains unstudied his authographic manuscript Varios de Literatura, de Don Manuel Lozano Pérez Ramajo [c. 1825], kept in the library of the Lázaro Galdiano Museum. This ms. contains: a Tratado sobre el Acento de la lengua Castellana remitido a la Real Academia Española en Julio de 1825, an outline grammar of Spanish, an essay on the adaptation of foreign nouns to Spanish, a Suplemento a los sinónimos de Huerta, some notes on grammar and on Don Quichotte and a translation of the Nouveaux dialogues des morts (1683) by Fontenelle, with an interesting preface which contains Ramajo's translation theory. This work aims to introduce the various life and work of Ramajo, the Varios de literatura manuscript is especially considered and Ramajo’s idiosincratic critical point of view regarding the Spanish Royal Academy. All this is framed in contrast with the life and work of better known contemporary authors acquainted by Ramajo, such as Diego Clemencín, Antonio Capmany and Francisco Sánchez-Barbero.