The relationship between the History of Language and the History of Literature

Abstract

The relationship between the History of Language and the History of Literature as disciplines has been a relationship of subordination, both from a conceptual and a methodological point of view. The first has been subordinated to the second. This article deals, first, with the historical circumstances and events that have determined the situation of subordination: the cultural identification between language and literature (but with the subordination of the first to the second), the birth of Romance linguistics (which, paradoxically, did not favor the autonomy of the history of the language), and the emergence of national cultures, which also gave priority to national literature. Secondly refers to the methodological and practical features of the two disciplines, which also explain why the relationship has gone the way it has gone. And, thirdly, we briefly deal with the current state of the subject, which suggests that the history of the language has tended to acquire autonomy in recent years, although the aim should not be to dispense with literary history but to establish the appropriate links with it.