Catalan Literature: From the 16th to the 20th Century

Posted on Mar 11, 2025 in Philology

Catalan Literature: 16th to 20th Century

16th Century: Decline

  • Causes: Spanish nobility and remoteness of the court, the ‘DOR’ literature of the Spanish century.
  • Consequences:
    1. Valencian revolt
    2. War of the Reapers
    3. Treaty of the Pyrenees

The printing press favored Castilian. Humanism: the measure of all things.

  • Poetry Authors: Peter Seraph (Barcelona), John Timoneda (Barcelona), Christopher Despig (Valencia)

17th Century: Baroque Influence

Copy of Spanish Baroque literature.

  • Poetry Authors: Rector Vallfogona (eschatological poetry, Tortosa), Francesc Fontanella (Barcelona, Perpignan)

18th Century: Literary Poverty

Influence of the Enlightenment, Neoclassicism, banning of publications in Catalan.

  • Authors: Baro of Maldà, Juan Ramis (theater), Lucrecia

Renaissance: Recovery of Language and Literature

Historical and cultural movement that recovered the language and literature.

  • Objectives:
    • Retrieve the ‘LUS’ of the tongue in cultural and literary aspects.
    • Recover the medieval past and the Catalan tradition.
    • Create a unique literature.
    • Reset floral motifs.

Industrialization: steam engine, railway (industrial bourgeoisie and the proletariat).

Romanticism: Individualism and Imagination

  • Individualism and empowerment of self.
  • Feelings and imagination over reason.
  • Freedom of creation, spontaneity, and originality.
  • Idealization of reality leading to dissatisfaction.
  • Themes: Middle Ages, popular culture, search and evaluation of beauty.

Poetry: Jacinto Verdaguer

Creator of modern literary language, ecclesiastical studies (Vic), floral motifs. Works: L’Atlàntida, Canigó.

Theater

Types: Cult (historical melodrama -> Bourgeois), Popular (parody of the cult drama, Seraph Pitarra).

Authors: Guimerá Angel

Works: Sea and Sky, Maria Rosa, Terra Baixa (Earth Floor), The Daughter of the Sea.

Stages:
  1. Romantic (Sea and Sky)
  2. Romanticism and Realism (Maria Rosa, Terra Baixa, The Daughter of the Sea)
  3. New aesthetic trends
  • Features: Miscegenation in the works, location of women as lovers.
  • Romantic Drama: Historical drama, violence, struggle, passion.
  • Rural Tragedy: Farmers, shepherds…

Narrative: Narcís Oller

Procurator court, romanticism and realism adapted to naturalism (objective view of reality), naturalism (unpleasant, sad, pessimistic).

Works:
  • L’escanyapobres (Capitalism, industrialism)
  • La febre d’or (Bag, Ascona, bourgeois)
  • La bogeria (Crazy dunk history)
  • Pilar Prim (Descriptions of the characters)

Modernism: A New Movement

Established as a movement.

Great Industrialization

Catalan political and trade unions. New ideas, desire for modernization. Literary, artistic, and intellectual splendor.

Stages:
  • 1890-1900: L’Avenç – language reform, European culture. Santiago Rusiñol. Sitges Festival.
  • 1900-1910: Consolidated modernism as a movement, less aggressiveness, youth magazine.
Poetry: Literary Currents
  • Decadence, symbolism (suggest mood with the description of real elements), individualism.
  • Human life in the world.
  • Social concern for social facts and marginalization.
  • Harmony between man and nature, Parnassianism.

Joan Maragall

(Barcelona) Poet and journalist, collaborated with L’Avenç, influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche. 3 genres: poetry, essays, newspaper articles.

Kind of Poetry:
  • Spontaneist (individual creativity)
  • Regenerationist (Nietzsche and Catalan bourgeois)
Works:
  • Poesies
  • Visions i cants
  • Enllà
  • L’elogi de la paraula (poetry and essays reflecting on the creative experience)

School of Majorca: vision of the landscape, containment of feelings, influence of the classics.

  • Llobera
  • Costa and Juan Miguel and Maria Antonia Alcover Salva
Narrative Features:
  • Creation of poetic prose, less realistic.
  • Protagonist rebels and nonconformist.
  • Character psychology.
  • Symbolic space and descriptions.
  • Determinism, sensuality, and mysticism.
Authors:
  • Víctor Català (Drama rural)
  • Prudenci Bertrana (Josafat)
  • Josep Pous i Pagès (Quan bull la olla)
  • Joaquim Ruyra
  • Raimon Casellas

Theater

  • Didees drama: social conflicts, workers, intellectual anarchists.
Authors:
  • Josep Pous i Pagès and Ignacio Iglesias
Symbolist Theater:
  • Short pieces, intense, suggestive language.
  • Minority public.
Authors:
  • Santiago Rusiñol and Adrià Gual
Theater Authors:
  • Joan Puig i Ferreter (naturalistic theater)
  • Santiago Rusiñol (Bohemian stages: conflict between artist and bourgeois, approximation to reality, floral motifs)