A partir de la ya famosa investigación de Antonello Gerbi sobre la “disputa” acerca de la naturaleza de América, exploro los discursos a favor y en contra de la idea de una naturaleza corrupta en la temprana prensa periódica porteña. Quiero proponer que la problematización del tópico en dos publicaciones periódicas entre 1801 y 1807, presentadas como intervenciones en una polémica en verdad imposible, permitió a los letrados que en ella intervenían definir su actividad en la prensa periódica.

The Instituto de Filología at the Universidad de Buenos Aires owed its creation in 1922 to an eminent intellectual, Ricardo Rojas, dean of the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras at the time, who expected that the development of the humanities would help to reinvigorate and nationalise a society considered too materialistic and without identity. The first directors of the Institute were part of Ramón Menéndez Pidal’s school in Madrid, who went to Buenos Aires to collaborate with the new institution, but with their own research interests and a political neo-colonialist agenda. The expected encounter between an Argentine nationalist institution and a group of well-trained philologists from another country was forceful and had a different outcome, giving birth to a centre of scientific excellence, but with different goals and tasks.

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