Masterpieces of Catalan Literature

Tirant lo Blanc

Context and Background

Written in the 15th-century Valencia during the cultural focus of the Crown of Aragon. Epidemics do not affect TNT. Cable S.or cat. Arises a new reader: noble, bourgeois.

Joanot Martorell: Noble family disputes with characters of the time. Viletar throughout Europe (toponymy). Tirant written around 1460, before 38, with Guillen de Varoic. First part published posthumously when he was 90, dedicated to Fernan Portus.

Influences and Structure

Influences: Ramon Llull ("Cavalry Command"), chronicle of Ramon Muntaner ("The Dream"), Sermons of Vincent Ferrer, Joan Lluis de Corella, verses of Cerveri de Girona, and Ausias March. Humanism: Petrarch, Dante, Boccaccio. Latin authors: Ovid, Virgil, Seneca.

Structure: Knight and hysteria, subsequent 485-chapter division.

• 1. England: Fame.
• 2. Maritime: Large wheeled Sicilian island. AMR Philip recommends.
• 3. Byzantine Empire (Turk): Aluminum Prot, Carmesina, Plaerdemavida.
• 4. Coast of Tunis: African NRT.
• 5. Turk: Deliverance, Turks sending troops, including Empress who dies.

Topics and Narrative Techniques

Total novel with a variety of narrative techniques:

• 1. Chivalric: Verisimilar, biography of a knight, not fantastic.
• 2. Historic: Geography.
• 3. Social: Advantage of personal estates, customs, food, dress, humanists.
• 4. Eroticism and Medieval Themes: AMR, sexual presence, scenes of lesbianism, foot fetishism, adultery, espionage, dirty bands.
• 5. Psychological: Depth of personal psychology (modern male), not flat types.

Curial and Guelf (Anonymous)

Manuscript and Structure

Conservative manuscript from the 15th century, dated 1876, popularized by Manuel Mila i Fontanals. Structure: 3 books, everything revolves around the knight.

• 1. Curial: Poor family, arrives at the court of the Marquis of Montferrat. The sister of Guelfa falls in love, offers economic protection. Curial becomes an armed knight and commences battles. Duchess of Austria accused of adultery; he proves her innocence. The duke offers his sister, Lachesis, and Guelfa enters a convent.
• 2. France: King organizes tournaments, Curial gains much fame. Lachesis appears, C is spellbound, elderly woman, and Guelfa gives economic protection.
• 3. Tunis: Prisoner, has no money and afterward enslaved. Faraic helps him conquer. AKST has a daughter toward her father's chamber, falls in love with C, requires a letter. She commits suicide after telling him where her father's treasure is. Sun and deliverer nobles recover the treasure, returning to MNF.

Renaissance

Cultural, political, and literary movement. Publication of La Patria in 1833, a poem by Charles Aribau. Objective: to recover the language and culture. Catalan reinstatement of floral games promotes literary creation. Correspondents set three prizes: nation, faith, and love. Conservative poetry, rustic, language with archaic elements, glorious past.

Jacint Verdaguer

Ten years in the seminary, contact with the church. Ordained, but suffers from illnesses and is sent toward Cuba. During this time writes L'Atlantida. Returns to the Holy Land, to Folgueroles, then Barcelona to the home of a rich widow and makes a comeback. Work: in youth wrote poems, bucolic inspired by nature, some poems of love. Wins floral games and becomes known.

Romanticism

Consolidates in Europe in the late 18th century. Born in England and Germany. Breaks with classicism. Great subjectivity that exalts sentiment, individualism, and landscape. Predilection for sentimental themes. European authors: Lord Byron, Goethe, Victor Hugo; Catalan: Jacint Verdaguer.

Realism

Movement arising in France, with the intention to counter Romanticism. Realism is just showing us how we are in works with objective truth. Madame Bovary by Flaubert, War and Peace by Tolstoy, Great Expectations by Dickens. Jacint Verdaguer: Canigó pattern.

Modernism

Cultural and artistic movement of the late 18th/early 19th century. Objective: modernization. No conservative Renaissance tendencies. Europeanization of Catalan essayists.

Angel Guimera

Born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, moved to Catalonia with his parents. Guimera's father was Kuan, unmarried, of mixed heritage, dark and marginalized past. Terra Baixa (Lowlands): Manelic, a village shepherd. Sebastian wants Marta (14) at the mill. To formalize the marriage in January, he also offers sex. He ruins a house and wants an heiress. So, he arranges rumors to marry Marta to the worst possible person (Manelic). They live in the high land; when they realize how much they love each other, Marta confesses. Manelic discovers the truth, kills Sebastian, and Marta ascends to the high ground.

Narcis Oller

Born into a bourgeois family. Was a lawyer. 1877 floral motifs, turns to writing due to idleness. Zola and his work introduced naturalism. La Papallona (The Butterfly), Pilar Prim. Protagonists obsessed over money.

Joan Maragall

Famous for poems like La vaca cega (The Blind Cow). Boy destabilizing, solitude (modernity), Ode to Spain (monologue, free metrics).