disciplines. Introductiones was designed as a clear and
systematic pedagogical manual for university students,
with which Nebrija sought to reintroduce into Spain
classical models and the premedieval grammatical
theory of Donates and Priscian. This work was an in-
stant success. It was revised and reedited several times
during Nebrija’s life and frequently reprinted (often
under different titles) throughout the sixteenth century in
Spain and elsewhere. At the insistence of Queen Isabel,
Nebrija published around 1488 (apparently reluctantly)
a bilingual Latin and Spanish version of this manual.
Introductiones became the basic manual for university
teaching of Latin in Spain and was one of the books most
often exported to the New World during the colonial
period. Throughout his career Nebrija published a series
of Repetitiones, formal university lectures dealing with
the pronunciation of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
Within the intellectual framework of late-fi fteenth-
century Spain, Nebrija’s Latin-Spanish (1492) and
Spanish-Latin dictionaries (c. 1495) as well as his
Gramática de la lengua castellana (1492) represent
major innovations. In all likelihood the two dictionaries
were designed to provide access to Latin rather than to
constitute repositories of contemporary Spanish. They
may well represent the fruits of an announced larger
“obra de vocablos,” which was to include lexicons of
civil law, medicine, and the Scriptures (his Ius Civilis
Lexicon of 1506 and his Lexicon illarum vocum quae
ad medicamentariam artem pertinent appended to a
1518 edition of a Latin translation of Dioscorides). The
Spanish-Latin dictionary was the fi rst systematic and
comprehensive work in which Spanish was the source
language. Both dictionaries, in many respects quite
modern in their lexicographic principles, were revised
by Nebrija and underwent several editions. The Latin
materials served other early sixteenth-century lexi-
cographers in the preparation of bilingual dictionaries
involving Catalan, French, and Sicilian.
According to its prologue, Nebrija published his
Gramática de la lengua castellana to fi x and stabilize
the Spanish language in order to prevent its further
decay, to facilitate the acquisition of Latin grammar,
and to provide a means of learning Spanish for those
peoples over whom Spain would one day rule. Within
a framework of Latin grammatical theory, Nebrija ex-
amines the linguistic facts of Spanish, with emphasis
on form rather than on function. The Gramática treats
orthography and pronunciation, prosody, etymology
(that is, morphology), the syntax of the ten parts of
speech, and closes with an overview of Spanish for the
second-language learner. Motivated by the belief that
standardized spelling would contribute to language
stability, Nebrija published a second spelling treatise
in 1517 under the title Reglas de orthographía en la
lengua castellana, essentially a resume of book 1 of
the Gramática castellana. Nebrija’s Gramática was not
reprinted until the eighteenth century and did not seem
to have much impact on the work of other sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century Spanish grammarians, many
of whom may not even have known this work.
In addition to his activities in the realm of language
studies, Nebrija composed Latin verse and prepared in
that language commentaries on Scripture, rhetorical
treatises, works of historiography, geography, and cos-
mography, as well as editions of and commentaries on
the writings of other humanists. Unfortunately, hardly
any of these works is available in a modern edition (for
titles, see Odriozola).Further Reading
Braselmann, P. Humanistische Grammatik und Volkssprache. Zur
“Gramática de la lengua castellana” von Antonio de Nebrija.
Düsseldorf, 1991.
García de la Concha, V., ed. Nebrija y la introduction del Re-
nacimiento en España. Salamanca, 1983.
Nebrija, A. de A. Gramática de la lengua castellana. A. Quilis,
3d ed. Madrid, 1989. Odriozola, Antonio. “La caracola del
bibliófi lo nebrisense,” Revista de bibliografía nacional 7
(1946) 3–114.
Rico, F. Nebrija frente a los bárbaros. Salamanca, 1978.
Steven N. DworkinNEIDHART (fl. ca. 1215–1230)
A Middle High German poet of some renown, there
is no documentary evidence of Neidhart’s name or of
his origins. Under the title “Lord” (her) nithart, the
so-called large (“C”) and the small (“A”) Minnesang-
manuscripts at Heidelberg University Library record the
stanzas attributed to him. The singer is apostrophized
as der von Riuwental (the one from the Riuew Valley)
in the Summer Songs (Sommerlieder) and the defi antly
stated “response-verses” (Trutzstrophen) of the Winter
Songs (Winterlieder). This explains the name Neidhart
von Reuental, a term especially used by earlier scholars.
Both names can also be interpreted allegorically (nith-
art is a medieval name for the devil); riuwental taken
literally reads as “valley of grief”). The only indication
for dating Neidhart’s poems is through an allusion in
“Wolfram von Eschenbach’s courtly novel Willehalm (l.
312,12; written ca. 1215), as well as references to con-
temporary political events or personalities in his songs
(Archbishop Eberhard II of Salzburg, Duke Friedrich
II of Austria). These clues lead to the conclusion that
Neidhart may possibly have lived from circa 1190 to- The author’s occupation and social rank are just
as unknown, although, like Walter von der Vogelweide,
he was probably a professional poet. It is almost certain
that Neidhart spent part of his early literary career in the
NEIDHART