Catalan Literature

Catalan Literature, literature of Catalonia, a region in north-eastern Spain. Under the influence of the splendour of the literary courts of independent Provençal potentates, the first Catalan poets adopted the verse forms and language of the troubadours of Provence and Toulouse. The 15th century was the golden age of Catalan poetry after John I of Aragón had established a poetic academy in Barcelona in 1393. Such royal encouragement continued under Martin I and Ferdinand I and helped liberate the Catalan literary style from foreign influences. During this period the language used in poetry as well as prose showed an increasing devotion to purely Catalan forms until it became an entirely native product. The greatest among the brilliant poets of this period was Ausías March, a Valencian. The subsequent decline of Catalan poetry was caused not by a lessening of the genius of Catalan poets, but by the loss of independence of Aragón to Castile and the triumphant rise and spread of Castilian (see Spanish Language). A Catalan, Juan Boscán Almogáver, inaugurated in Castilian the use of Italian poetic forms.

Few important prose works were produced in the Catalan language before the end of the 13th century. The 15th-century chivalric novel Tirant lo Blanc, written by Joanot Martorell, was translated into English in 1984. A humorous, ironic, yet compassionate account of the adventures of an imaginary knight, it gives vivid descriptions of the life of the time. Catalan writers produced very little other notable literature until the 19th-century renaissance or “Renaixença”. A major writer during the early years of this period was Bonaventura Carles Aribau, whose Oda a la Pàtria, written in 1833, is one of the best poems in modern Catalan. Other Catalan writers who attained celebrity include Jacint Verdaguer, author of two epics; and Àngel Guimerà, poet and dramatist.

During the 20th century the evolution of Catalan literature and literature written in Catalan has mirrored political developments in Catalonia. The consolidation of an autonomous government and the interest of intellectuals in normalizing language and culture resulted in a period of literary and artistic effervescence that would continue throughout the Second Republic until the beginning of the Spanish Civil War (1936). Modernism, “Noucentisme”, and the avant-garde coexisted in Catalonia during the first third of the 20th century. As aesthetics, Catalan Modernism, influenced by the architect Antoni Gaudí, ripened and embraced a multiplicity of artistic disciplines. Important modernist literary names are the writers Víctor Català (pseudonym of Caterina Albert), Santiago Rusiñol, and Joan Maragall. “Noucentisme” disagreed with the modernist predicament of political non-involvement and decadentism. Its proponents were responsible for the institutionalization of Catalan culture and were keen to elaborate on an already existing Catalan and Mediterranean mythology. Eugeni D’Ors and Josep Carner are among the most relevant noucentists. The avant-garde, with Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró as the principal figures, was arguably the most European artistic tendency of that period.

Under the regime (1939-1975) of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, traces of Catalan autonomy were temporarily abolished. The use of the Catalan language has since revived. The existence of a Catalan literature during the 1940s and 1950s conditioned by silence and written as a token of resistance should not be forgotten, symbolic as it is of the experience of exodus and exile suffered by Catalan intellectuals. In poetry, neo-symbolism gave way to historical realism in the 1960s and connections were established with the Catalan literary life of the beginning of the century. In narrative, the number of titles published in Catalan has increased massively since the end of the dictatorship. A markedly feminist narrative has been produced by a number of Catalan female authors writing both in Catalan and in Castilian. This so-called Catalan Women’s Renaissance, deeply influenced by Mercè Rodoreda, includes names such as Esther Tusquets, Montserrat Roig, and Nuria Amat.