Las letras transfronterizas. La Academia Antártica y la red de comunicación entre los poetas.

Abstract

From a brief account concerning the concept of Academia and imitations of it in the Renaissance, this article studies essentially the Spanish American Academia Antártica no as an entity that was circumscribed to a particular urban space (the city of Lima), as has sometimes been advanced, but rather as a poetic idea whose members and most notable poets found themselves separated by the vast geographical spaces of the Kingdom of Peru. They strove nevertheless to make these distances shorter by creating solid networks in which a flourishing lettered community was established. The detailed study of preliminary matter and other paratexts of contemporary works enables us to put forward a list of poets interrelated in their writings to such a degree that the existence of the Academia Antártica took from more on the printed page than in a physical place. The authors were of sufficient renown so as to see their verses printed in the Spanish mainland, but also highly praised by such eminent writers as Miguel de Cervantes.