A Retrospective View of La corónica 's First Ten Years

A Retrospective View of La corónica's First Ten Years John Lihani, Founding Editor [This article first appeared in 1982 in vol. 11, no. 1 of La corónica, pp. 124–28] Now that La corónica has completed its tenth year of publication, the response to it among medievalists engaged in the study of Spanish language and literature has been most gratifying. It has been the good fortune of La corónica to receive enthusiastic support from its very inception. It was conceived to serve its specific readership as the best possible clearing house for literary commentary, lively ideas, and interesting and informative reports on personalia. The fact that this journal and newsletter is circulated in eighteen countries (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, West Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and, of course, the United States) is testimony to the fact that the academic members of the profession are in agreement with its function as originally envisaged to foment a cohesiveness among Hispanomedievalists. As one reviews the pages of the past twenty issues of La corónica, one can observe a steady increase in professional activity along with a broader scope in content and regular changes in the devoted editorial staffs. The list of names of all those new as well as experienced scholars to whom we are indebted for contributing to the success of this periodical is unsurprisingly a rather extensive one. Many of these notable names are already found throughout the issues of La corónica, and each and every number deservedly carries its grateful list of acknowledgements. Perhaps one of the quickest ways of acknowledging La corónica's debts to all concerned would be simply to call attention to the names of the contributors appearing in the ten-year index (compiled by the editorial assistant, Ann D. Miletich, in collaboration with John S. Miletich and Alan Deyermond, the idea for which was first suggested by Russell V. Brown). To commemorate the tenth anniversary, we might recall that the idea for a periodical was conceived at the Modern Language Association Convention [End Page 10] held in Chicago in 1971. At that time, the Executive Committee of Spanish 1, the Medieval Language and Literature Section, consisted of V. R. B. Oelschläger, Dana Nelson, Carmelo Gariano, and Herschel J. Prey, who served as chairman. This committee was responsible for engendering two other committees: 1) the continuing Executive Committee, with additional members—Julio Rodríguez Puértolas and James Burke—with Dana Nelson as the new chairman, and 2) the newly established Bibliography and Research Committee. It was Dana Nelson of the University of Arizona who activated the idea of a newsletter and carefully nurtured the Bibliography and Research Committee, which was tasked with the responsibility for the birth of La corónica. The Bibliography and Research Committee counted on the essential services of Peter Dunn (SUNY, Buffalo; now at Wesleyan University), Harold G. Jones (University of Missouri, now at University of Houston), Richard P. Kinkade (Emory University, now at University of Arizona), Thomas Montgomery (Tulane University), Harvey L. Sharrer (University of California, Santa Barbara), and John Lihani (University of Kentucky), chairman. From June to December of 1972, each member of the committee worked assiduously on that first issue (see plate 12) in order to accomplish his assignment in advance of the date of the MLA meeting, which was designated as the unofficial deadline for the inaugural issue. The first, or founding, editor's files reveal 168 separate items of correspondence written for the newsletter during that intense interval when a working week of sixty-five to seventy hours was a normal schedule. Dana Nelson selected the resonant name of La corónica, and tried vainly to obtain funds from various sources to launch the publication. No such funds were forthcoming, and we had to accept the hard fact that there would be no budgetary assistance for the newsletter. Nevertheless, despite the absolute lack of funds, and perhaps all too naively, we progressed with the idea, determined to devote the needed effort in time and labor in order to make the newsletter a reality. We were convinced that once the...

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