Catalan Literature: From Folk Poetry to Neoclassicism
Folk Poetry
Folk Poetry
Serious literature did not have much importance in Catalan, as it was done mainly with Castilian. Popular literature was being held with the Catalan language because it was transmitted orally. Thus, all the popular literature also gives us historical information. Popular poetry was mainly comprised of: The Joys, The Christmas, Corrandes, The Romances, tales, and legends. Popular literature was collected in songbooks and Romancero.
The Decline
The Decline
During these three centuries (16th to 18th century), we can say that in Catalonia there was a decline, as Catalan literature was not growing much.
Reasons:
- Union of the Crowns of Aragon and Castile, which meant that there started to be some Spanish influence.
- Union of the Catalan and Castilian nobility and the emigration of the Catalan court to Madrid.
- Significance of the Spanish Baroque literature (Golden Centuries), which overshadowed Catalan literature.
- The War of Succession led to the banning of the Catalan language, which resulted in a situation of diglossia. Literature was reduced a lot, and poets wrote in Spanish.
However, Catalan culture was maintained through popular literature, in a small, very familiar area.
Ausias told the knight, “Shield, pen, and go to war,” because he (the knight) did not want the Matesa (shield) and was also a writer (pen) and a knight like St. George. His style is elliptical, with an abundance of hyperbaton, often difficult to understand. He employs a variety of literary resources, notably comparisons. There are intense metaphors, an abundance of rhetorical questions and apostrophes, antitheses and paradoxes, and personifications and hyperboles.
The Renaissance
The Renaissance (16th Century)
A cultural movement that emerged in Italy and spread throughout Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. This period is characterized by imitating Latin and Greek texts. Man is the center of the world.
Peter Seraph
With poetry especially influenced by Ausias March, Petrarch, and popular poetry, he wrote secular works and spiritual works.
Baroque
Baroque (17th Century)
There was too much banditry and Catholic rigor. The European Baroque artistic trend is opposed to the previous one. The features are overloaded sentences, a very pessimistic outlook, and the main theme is death. We can distinguish two currents: Conceptismo and Culteranismo.
Francesc Vicent Garcia
Also known under the pseudonym The Rector of Vallfogona, and as the pseudonym suggests, he was rector of the activity.
He wrote poetry and drama. The themes of his compositions are love, following the model of Spanish authors (copy of Gongora and Quevedo), and eschatological themes that expressed an even more morbid and vulgar view of life.
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism (18th Century)
The Enlightenment is an intellectual current characterized by its rationality and an attempt to prove things empirically. Basically, prose was written.
Neoclassicism is the artistic movement of the Enlightenment. It is characterized, apart from rationality, by a return to the classic defense of freedom.
Ramis and John Ramis
They wrote plays and poetry in Catalan, and some documents in Spanish on the history of Mallorca.