Juan Andrés

Juan Andrés y Morell (15 February 1740 in Planes, Alicante – 12 January 1817 in Rome) was a Spanish Jesuit priest, Christian humanist and literary critic of the Age of Enlightenment.

[1] He was the creator of world history and comparative literature (i.e. of Letters and Sciences of the eighteenth century) through the most important and extensive of his works:[2] Dell'Origine, progressi e stato d'ogni attuale letteratura[3] (1st ed.

Italian, Parma, 1782–1799) – Origen, progresos y estado actual de toda la literatura (Madrid, 1784–1806, but was incomplete as it did not include the part devoted to the ecclesiastical sciences) only recently restored to a critical and complete edition.

[7] Andrés is also the author of, among many other titles, Family Letters, (Tour of Italy) (Madrid and Valencia, 1786–1800),[8] the Spanish-language work is one of the most important of its kind and a major European piece, mainly composed of a literary-scientific and especially bibliographic journey.

The thoughts of Andrés, settled in the late neoclassical Age of Enlightenment responds with a strong Spanish-Italian tradition not only identifiable with the big fellow Jesuits, victims of expulsion, most prominently Lorenzo Hervás, builder of comparative linguistics, and the great music theorist Antonio Eximeno together with whom were seen as the nucleus of the eighteenth century School of Spanish Universalists, but further amplified the line represented by Ignacio de Luzan, Ludovico Antonio Muratori and the great pioneer and genius Giambattista Vico.