Una autobiografía del «tiempo de los novatores»: las Memorias de Raimundo de Lantery

• Published in: Criticón (Toulouse, France) Vol. 103; pp. 9 - 20
• Main Author: Pedro Álvarez de Miranda
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Spanish
• Published: Presses universitaires du Mirail 02.11.2008
• Subjects: autobiography; Cadiz; end of the seventeenth century; Lantery Raimundo de; orality; trade
• ISSN: 0247-381X
• DOI: 10.4000/criticon.11231

This article offers a reexamination of Raimundo de Lantery’s Memorias. De Lantery was a Savoy businessman, established at Cadix. In the years around the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth (his text was written in 1705-1706 and deals with the period 1673-1700), he decided to put into writing the story of his life. All traces of the original manuscript have been lost (that is to say of the Second part of his Memoirs, since nothing is known about the First part). It was published by its owner Álvaro Picardo in 1949. De Lantery’s Memorias are examined in the light of recent critical studies on autobiography. The study proposes an approach based on a philological perspective where such questions as the text’s spontaneity of language as well as the absence of litterary artifice are taken into account. These elements contribute to the impression on the reader of the text’s captivating sensation of truth.