Sobre el estilo de Juan de Valdés

Resumen

Juan de Valdes’s religious curiosity, and the fact that he addressed a group of Italians, led him to be strongly concerned about the accuracy of his preaching, to feel a great respect towards the religious text and to avoid by all means artifices that could undermine the content of the message. When asked by linguistic issues by some of his disciples, he drafted his Dialogo de la lengua (circa 1535), where he explains, among other things, his thoughts on style: «the style of mine comes naturally, and with no affectation I write as I speak». If we look into the circle of Italian friends of Valdés, it is possible that many of them understood Spanish but did not write in it; Valdés intended to pave the way and facilitate the reading and writing, bearing in mind that reading was made aloud so that others could listen, understand and annotate in Spanish what Valdés said or had written while others read. Valdés introduces his «write as I speak» as a rule of simplicity: a writing without affectation bound to what was said in order to facilitate its religious goals; the accuracy of the religious text leads him to propose another form of accuracy: the phonetic and graphic accuracy of what is being said.