Joan Cortada i Sala

Joan Cortada i Sala (born March 21, 1805 in Barcelona , † July 9, 1868 Sant Gervasi de Cassoles , incorporated into Barcelona in 1897) was a Catalan writer of the Romantic period and a historian. As a writer, he mainly used the Spanish language. In his historical novels and short stories, however, he strongly advocated the Catalan language and culture.

biography

After her husband died early, Joan Cortada's mother fled to Palma de Mallorca with her son during the Spanish War of Independence . She died there in 1812. The boy, orphaned at such an early age, grew up with his uncle, who was canon of Tarragona Cathedral . Cortada later studied philosophy at the Tridentine Seminary in Tarragona and law at the Universities of Cervera and Barcelona . It was not until 1860 that he obtained a licentiate in civil and canon law and in 1867 the licentiate in philosophy and humanities at the University of Barcelona. From 1828 to 1840 he worked as a fiscal agent at the Barcelona Court of Justice. He then devoted himself to teaching and the humanities. He taught history as a lecturer at the University of Barcelona and at a grammar school in Barcelona, ​​where he also took over the school management from 1860. From 1835 Cortada was a member of the Acadèmia de Bones Lletres in Barcelona. In addition, he was a librarian and a leading contributor to the restoration of old books in a museum. He was also a member of the Academia de la Historia of Madrid and from 1839 president of the Societat Econòmica Barcelonesa d'Amics del País (Barcelona business association of the friends of the country). In 1843 he was elected as a member of the Cortes of Tarragona.

He wrote six romantic novels in Spanish, some of which dealt with Catalan subjects (for example, Las revueltas de Cataluña or El bastardo de Entença , 1838). He wrote moralizing stories such as El libro de la familia (1864). He published in the newspapers Diario de Barcelona (under the pseudonym Abén-Abudema ) and El Telégrafo (under the pseudonym Benjamín ) socially critical descriptions of the environment . These journal articles were published posthumously under the title Articulos (1890). His most interesting work is Cataluña y los Catalanes (1860). This work consists of a collection of articles that he wrote for El Telégrafo in 1859 . In this compilation, the actions of the Catalans is justified for the first time in history. Here regionalism is qualified for the first time as a political value in and of itself. A Catalan-language publication in the weekly La Barretina in 1868 resulted in the Spanish government banning the publication. As a historian, Cortada published a history of Spain (1841), a history of Portugal (1844) and Proceso instruido contra Juan Sala y Serralonga (1868, criminal case against the gang leader Juan Sala y Serralonga). In these works he stripped the historical events of the respective romantic myth in favor of the rather harsh reality. He wrote opera librettos like Arnaldo de Erill . This work was premiered by Nicolau Guanyabens in 1859 in the Liceu of Barcelona. He also created numerous literary translations of French ( George Sand and Eugène Sue ) and Italian-language literature ( Tommaso Grossi , Massimo d'Azeglio ). Together with Josep de Manjarrés i Bofrull , he published in 1848 under the pseudonym Juan y José El libro verde de Barcelona , anecdotes and customs from Barcelona. Viaje á la isla de Mallorca en el estio de 1845 , Cortada's diary of a trip to Mallorca published in 1845, is interesting from a cultural and historical point of view because it documents a fully developed romantic perception of the island, which is supported by the locals' interest in the landscape.

Cortada always strongly advocated the Catalan language, although the number of his literary works in the Catalan language is very limited. He had translated the poem-like novella La fuggitivia by Tommaso Grossi into Catalan as La noia fugitiva (1834, The Fleeing Girl), a love story from the time of the French Wars . Another literary document in Catalan is his presidential address for the Jocs Florals in Barcelona in 1864. He had campaigned vehemently for the reintroduction of the medieval poetry competition of the Jocs Florals. In 1839 he had Joaquim Rubió i Ors's first poems in Catalan published in the Diario de Barcelona magazine. He also strengthened the Catalan language through his collaboration on the Diccionari quintilinguë (1839, Catalan-Castilian-Latin-French-Italian dictionary in four volumes). From 1842 to 1848 he created the 2nd edition of this Diccionari quintilingüe in three volumes together with Lluís Bordas and Miquel Anton Martí . In an indirect way, and yet always very resolute, Cortada supported the movement for Catalan culture in his time. Cortada i Sala died in Sant Gervasi de Cassoles in 1868, where he found his final resting place in the Cementiri de Sant Gervasi .

literature

• Enciclopèdia Catalana: Cortada i Sala, Joan. In: Gran enciclopèdia catalana. 2nd edition 5th reprint 1992. Volume 8 . Enciclopèdia catalana, Barcelona 1987, ISBN 84-85194-96-9 , p. 246 (Catalan).
• Corminas, Juan: Cortada, D. Juan . In: Suplemento a las Memorias para ayudar a formar un diccionario crítico de escritores catalanes . 1849, p. 89 (Catalan).
• Schönherr, Ekkehard: Landscape, Customs and Three Kinds of the Past. Mallorca in the travel diary of Juan Cortada y Sala from 1845 . In: Schwarz, Angela; Mysliwietz-Fleiß, Daniela (Ed.): Journeys in the past. Historical tourism in the 19th and 20th centuries . Böhlau, Cologne 2019, ISBN 978-3-412-50780-0 , pp. 77-98 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Joan Cortada i Sala in the WorldCat bibliographic database
• Enciclopèdia.cat: Joan Cortada i Sala |. Retrieved April 12, 2018 (Catalan). 
• M. Àngels Verdaguer i Pajerols (Pen Català): Cortada i Sala, Joan. Archived from the original on April 13, 2018 ; Retrieved April 12, 2018 (Catalan). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The daily life data are taken from the Catalan language Wikipedia.
2. ↑ Ghanimé, Albert Joan Cortada. Catalunya i els Catalans al Segle XIX. Barcelona 1995, p. 29.
3. ↑ Àngels Verdaguer i Pajerols on: visat.cat (PEN Català)
4. ↑ Juan Corminas, p 89
5. ↑ Schönherr, Landschaft, pp. 83f.
6. ↑ Àngels Verdaguer i Pajerols on: visat.cat (PEN Català)