The scholastic readings of Platero and I in the history of Spanish education (1930-1970)

Abstract

The first contacts with literature and the first reading experiences, take place in school, mainly in the form of school textbooks. In fact, for the majority, during most of the twentieth century, these school books were probably the principal readings of their life and the foundational source of their literary education. Indeed, perhaps their reading of these texts represented the only occasion in which they were exposed to the classics. In this article we focus on the renderings of one of them, Platero y yo (Platero and I), during a specific period in the history of Spanish education (1930-1970). Through the review of a wide and varied sample of school textbooks, we first intend to describe for this historical period the presence of Platero and Juan Ramón Jiménez in reading books and language and literature books in both primary and secondary education. Next, we analyze the process by which this literary work was transformed into an educational text, drawing upon a set of pedagogical translation procedures, in which technological and scientific, but also cultural and ideological factors play their part. Finally, some of the repercussions of this process on the image of the work and on the relationship of the readers with the text are suggested.