CATALAN LITERATURE

the body of literature written in the Catalan language, prominent from the 13th to the 16th century and then revived in the 19th and 20th centuries. The oldest extant text in Catalan is the Homilies d'Organy, a collection of sermons dating from the 12th or early 13th century but now appreciated more for their linguistic than for their literary value. Early kings of Aragon and counts of Barcelona patronized troubadours imported from Provence and composing in the Occitan language, but by the 15th century the foreign influence had been fully thrown off, and a vigorous period of purely Catalan poetry emerged, climaxing in the verses of Ausis March and Jaume Roig. Johan Roi de Corella, of Valencia, was perhaps the finest Catalan poet of the Renaissance. Catalan prose during the Middle Ages was represented in Christian speculations and in histories and chronicles. From the 16th to the 18th century Catalan letters languished, eclipsed by Castilian Spanish, the language of the royal courts. In the 19th century, however, in a revival called the Renaixensa (or Renaixena), Catalan literature flourished, inaugurated by such poets as Bonaventura Carles Aribau, Joaquim Rubi i Ors, Victor Balaguer, Jacint Verdaguer Santal, and especially Miguel Costa i Llobera. Essayists and dramatists also produced works of considerable originality. From the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera (192330) through the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (193975) Catalan was frequently suppressed, and only mild literary activity prevailed, mainly among Catalans in exile. An exuberant nationalism in the last quarter of the 20th century, however, was accompanied by a resurgence of Catalan literature in Catalonia and Majorca.