Catalan literature is the name conventionally used to refer to literature written in the Catalan language. The Catalan literary tradition is extensive, starting in the Middle Ages.
A Romantic revivalist movement of the 19th century, Renaixença, classified Catalan literature in periods. The centuries long chapter known as Decadència that followed the golden age of Valencian literature, was perceived as extremely poor and lacking literary works of quality. Further attempts to explain why this happened (see History of Catalonia) have motivated new critical studies of the period, and nowadays a revalorisation of this early modern age is taking place. Catalan literature reemerged in the 19th and early 20th centuries, to experience troubled times from the start of the Spanish Civil War on. Many intellectuals were forced into exile and Catalan culture couldn't find its place in Catalonia until the restoration of democracy in Spain.
Famous quotes containing the words catalan and/or literature:
“The table kills more people than war does.”
—Catalan proverb, quoted in Colman Andrews, Catalan Cuisine.
“A book is not an autonomous entity: it is a relation, an axis of innumerable relations. One literature differs from another, be it earlier or later, not because of the texts but because of the way they are read: if I could read any page from the present time—this one, for instance—as it will be read in the year 2000, I would know what the literature of the year 2000 would be like.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)