CATALAN LITERATURE

Literature of Catalonia, a region in northeastern Spain. Under the influence of the splendor of the literary courts of independent Provençal potentates, the first Catalan poets adopted the verse forms of the troubadours of Provence and Toulouse. The 15th century was the Golden Age of Catalan poetry. 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 (c. 1397–1460), 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. A Catalan, Juan Boscán Almogáver (1493–1542), inaugurated in Castilian the use of Italian poetic forms.

Few important prose works were produced in Catalan before the end of the 13th century. The 15th-century chivalric novel Tirant lo Blanc, written by Joanot Martorell (1415?–80?), 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. A major writer during the early years of this period was Buenaventura Carlos Ariba (1798–1862), whose Oda a la patria, written in 1833, is one of the best poems in modern Catalan. Other Catalan writers attained celebrity, including Mosén Jacinto Verdaguer (1845–1902), author of two epics; and Ángel Guimerá (1847–1924), poet and dramatist. Among important Catalan writers of the 20th century are the novelists Narcís Oller (1846–1930), Joaquim Ruyra (1858–1939), and Prudenci Bertrana (1867–1941) and the poets Joan Maragall (1860–1911) and Carles Riba Bracóns (1893–1959). Under the regime (1939–75) of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, all traces of Catalan autonomy were temporarily abolished; the use of the Catalan language has since revived, however.