El Duende Especulativo sobre la Vida Civil in the european circuit of spectators

Abstract

The series of the Spanish Spectators started with El Duende Especulativo sobre la Vida Civil published under the pseudonym of Juan Antonio Mercadàl. We do not have any certainty about the identity of the author. Was it Francisco Mariano Nipho, founder of modern journalism in Spain, or was it Juan Enrique Graef, journalist of Dutch origin? But we can be sure about the cultural filiation of the moral paper. Its hypotext is the francophone Dutch paper Le Misantrope of Justus van Effen, which was published in The
Hague as an adaptation of the English prototypes The Tatler and The Spectator. In our contribution we are analysing the intertextual or interjournalistic relations, in order to place the Spanish newspaper within the European discoursive context. After an analysis of the Duende and the Misantrope on a micronarrative level, we are describing the relevant aspects of the connection between the two texts. It was possible to observe the export of protestant values of the early Spectators to the discourse system of Spain, whose specific axiology of a catholic ethic system does not only react to the foreign discourses, but does adapt itself to the poetics of the Spectators, contributing to the development of a significant genre of its time.