Los silencios del canónigo: Francisco Manrique Cabrera y su Historia de la literatura puertorriqueña.

Abstract

In 1956 Francisco Manrique Cabrera published a history of Puerto Rican literature, a text that many believed was the first ever dealing with this topic. The present article studies this history‘s supposed merit of having been the first of its kind by comparing it with Josefina Rivera de Álvarez‘s dictionary of Puerto Rican literature, a book which deserves the merit that traditionally has been awarded to Cabrera‘s work. It also studies the cultural context in which these two foundational works appeared. The article, therefore, studies the texts‘ ideological structures and their organizing principles, especially in Cabrera‘s work, as these can be seen in this book‘s prologue. The article also examines the absences and silences in the book‘s preface since these marked the entire work. These are contrasted with questions about the same topic formulated by other intellectuals of the period, particularly by Tomás Blanco.