From the distance of the dawn of the 21st century, this new approach to the work and thought of Pedro Henríquez Ureña, is crucial for a renewed critical approach to Latin American writing. The Dominican essayist left behind a legacy of poetry, theatre, short stories, essays on philosophy, aesthetics, sociology, metrics, linguistics, etc.; but it was his pages on literary criticism and historiography that radically shifted Hispano-Americanist studies.