La Epístola a Suero de Quiñones de Enrique de Villenaarticulación informativa y macroestructura textual en la transición del ars dictaminis a la epístola humanística

Abstract

During the 15th C the art of writing epistles changed in a slow but evident way. The rigid norms codified in the Medieval artes dictandi were progressively abandoned while the new models coming from Italy that would configure the Humanistic epistle were gradually assimilated. This process resulted in the consolidation of a new discourse tradition in the letter-writing genre in the 16th C. An interesting example of the transition between these two models (the Medieval and the Humanistic ones) is Enrique de Villena’s Epistle to Suero de Quiñones. To discover the complexity of its textual configuration the letter has been divided into discourse units. The information structure of the utterances and their grouping in textual sections are analysed in order to show its macrostructure. This approach, which complements the more traditional analysis of the cohesion mechanisms and the syntactic configuration, allows to highlight the changes introduced by Villena in the Medieval epistle structure casted by the ars dictaminis.