Luigi Pavia and his contributions to the teaching of Spanish to Italians

Abstract

At the end of the nineteenth century, Luigi Pavia published three Spanish grammars (Grammatica elementare della lingua spagnuola con temi, esercizi e letture [Elementary grammar of the Spanish language with themes, exercises and readings], Grammatica della lingua spagnuola con temi, letture e dialoghi [Grammar of the Spanish language with themes, readings and dialogues] and Grammatica spagnuola [Spanish grammar]). Even though these works were subsequently published on several occasions until 1927 and became books of special significance in the field of the teaching of Spanish to Italians, so far, they have gone unperceived in the field of linguistic historiography. This work aims to mitigate this lack of attention and analyze the significance of this author and his method of teaching Spanish with different specific objectives: a) to describe his works, different editions, structure, methodology, objectives, sources, and b) to evaluate the significance of these grammars in the field of the teaching of languages, specifically, the teaching of Spanish for Italians between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century.