Renaixença

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Renaixença [ rənə'ʃɛnsə ] ( Catalan for "rebirth", German also: "Catalan Renaissance") was a romantic movement of the late 19th century that was philologically, historically and nationally based on the Catalan Middle Ages, a revival of the Catalan language and literature made, as well as aimed at their integration into the European literature of the time.

The Renaixença not only moved Catalonia proper, but also other Catalan-speaking regions such as the Balearic Islands . It also found its expression in the revival of the medieval poetry competition Jocs Florals (dt: "Flower Games"). There was also a comparable Renaixença of the Occitan language and culture, which culminated in the work Mirèio by the Occitan poet Frédéric Mistral .

At the turn of the century, the Noucentisme politicized the literary and cultural movement of the Renaixença. He made the demand for cultural and political autonomy for Catalonia. Catalonia defined itself as an independent nation in a Spanish state. The majority of the Catalans did not question their membership of the national association of all of Spain. "There is no doubt that (this upswing) as an independent cultural and regional movement was closely related to the increasing economic importance of the region of Catalonia ..." The political component of this movement is often discussed under the heading of Catalanism . The magazine La Renaixença , published by the Catalan association Jove Catalunya (“Young Catalonia”) from 1871 onwards, gave this cultural and literary movement its name. This movement ended a period of cultural decline and political power loss that had lasted in Catalonia since the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), which was intensified by the Nueva Planta decrees that followed in 1716 , in which the traditional institutions, privileges and regional autonomies of Catalonia were suspended and suppressed were.

The Renaixença of the Catalan language and culture

The unification of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon in 1497 had caused a decline in Catalan literature. The revival of creativity in the Catalan language was initiated at the beginning of the 19th century by scholars who deal with this language and its medieval literature ( Marià Aguiló i Fuster , Manuel Milà i Fontanals ) and the question of a national identity for the Catalans Made subject. The publication of the thoroughly romantic poem La Pàtria (“The Fatherland”) by Bonaventura Carles Aribau in 1833 is considered to pave the way for the Renaixença. The view that it is a long-running movement of linguistic and cultural revaluation is probably more correct of Catalan, which then literally "exploded" around 1830 in Aribau's work and work. Aribau, who has lived in Madrid for professional reasons since 1826, celebrates his Catalan homeland in the poem La Pàtria and praises the virtues of the Catalan language. In his work, Aribau drew on a deep sense of the fatherland that manifested itself as early as the 15th century - going far beyond a national feeling - against John II of Aragón , for fear of Castilian foreign infiltration. Joan II was perceived by the self-confident Corts, the Catalan Estates Parliament, to be too friendly to Castile. The wedding of his son and later "Catholic King" Ferdinand II. To the Castilian heiress Isabella I in 1469 aroused serious fears. “Aribau was… a great mediator of German Romanticism to Catalonia and Spain; a romanticism that proclaimed the value of the national past and, with Herder , saw languages ​​as the expression of the people's soul. "

The work of the poet Joaquim Rubió i Ors , the revival of the medieval poetry competition Jocs Florals (1859) and the establishment of cultural associations such as the Ateneus gave the movement further support. The Renaixença reached its climax in the work of Jacint Verdaguer . At first, the lyric moment almost completely dominates the movement. It was not until the end of the 19th century that important prose writers came into the limelight with Narcís Oller i Moragas and Emili Vilanova i March . The work of Àngel Guimerà gives the theater a major boost.

The Renaixença, which was initially strongly influenced by Romanticism, took on increasingly realistic features towards the end of the century. In a certain sense, it had already reached its goal at the end of the 19th century: it left all subsequent cultural movements - based on the medieval high-level Catalan language - a living, modern and malleable language.

Footnotes and Notes

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g La Renaixença. In: Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana.
  2. ↑ a b Jacint Verdaguer . In: Walter Jens (ed.): Kindlers New Literature Lexicon . tape 17 . Kindler, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-463-43200-5 , p. 44-46 .
  3. ↑ a b c d La literatura catalana a Internet. Edicions 62: Renaixença.
  4. ↑ Catalonia is defined in a similar way in the Statute of Autonomy for Catalonia negotiated between the Spanish government and the regional government in Barcelona in 2006, which was withdrawn in 2010 by the Spanish Constitutional Court.
  5. ↑ a b c Walther L. Bernecker: Catalonia from the beginning to the end of Franquism . In: Bernecker, Eßer, Kraus: A little history of Catalonia . P. 41, p. 68 ff., P. 92, p. 104
  6. ^ A b c Walter Jens (ed.): Kindlers New Literature Lexicon . Volume 1 A – Az, p. 654, Bonaventura Carles Aribau: La Pàtria, ISBN 3-463-43200-5 .
  7. ↑ Cf. Herder's program in his essay On the Similarity of Middle English and German Poetry presented in the WP article: Deutsches Volkslied / Herder as a pioneer of folk song maintenance .
  8. ↑ a b Paragraph after: Artur Quintana, Handbuch des Katalanischen, p. 17

literature

  • Enciclopèdia Catalana: Renaixença, la . In: Gran enciclopèdia catalana. 2nd edition 3rd reprint 1992. Volume 19 . Enciclopèdia catalana, Barcelona 1987, ISBN 84-7739-020-7 , p. 236 f . (Catalan).
  • Walther L. Bernecker, Thorsten Esser, Peter A. Kraus: A little history of Catalonia . Frankfurt 2007 (Suhrkamp Verlag), ISBN 3-518-45879-5 .
  • Artur Quintana: Manual of Catalan . Barcelona 1997 (Fourth updated and expanded edition; Editorial Barcino), ISBN 84-7226-671-0 .

Web links

  • Enciclopèdia.cat: La Renaixença. Retrieved April 2, 2018 (Catalan).
  • La Renaixença. In: La literatura catalana a Internet. Edicions 62 (publisher), 2000, accessed November 20, 2019 (Catalan).