First ever English language book on 20th century cartooning and humour production in Catalonia Offers both broad history as well as close analysis of cartoon examples of the time Engages with academic debates on the power of humour, humour and identity and applies them to the Catalan context Offers contextualisation of the Catalan cartooning tradition within a broader socio-political context of Catalonia and Spain

A History of Catalan Folk Literature is the fruit of a collaborative effort between fifteen researchers from various universities and research centres who have joined forces to create a broader study of Catalan folk literature that addresses the Catalan linguistic and cultural territories in their entirety. Since the thirteenth century, Catalan culture has created a rich and abundant literary legacy, and since the mid-nineteenth century this has been complemented by a tradition of folklore studies that remains very much alive today. Within this comparatively recent discipline, folk literature has played a particularly important role. The book presents the evolution of Catalan folk literature studies in each of the areas that make up the Catalan linguistic and cultural territories referred to above. The period considered stretches from the mid-nineteenth century, when the beginnings of a scientific interest in folklore emerged across Europe, to the present day.

Pompeu Fabra (1868-1948) is renowned as the person who reformed and codified modern Catalan, giving it the condition of a normativised language of culture that proved fit to meet all the challenges of the twentieth century. The context in which he worked was defined by the ideology and momentum of a dynamic Catalan nationalism emerging out of the nineteenth-century cultural revival movement, energies which have continued to affect politics in the Spanish state through to the present. The imposing corpus of Fabra's writings —newspaper articles, lectures and papers, various grammars and the redaction of the official dictionary of Catalan— covered all aspects of the normativisation and the social normalisation of a rejuvenated national language. His work was, moreover, abreast of the most advanced developments in the newly emerging discipline of modern linguistics.The present volume was conceived in response to expressions of disappointment that the figure and the intellectual contributions of Pompeu Fabra have remained virtually unrecognised internationally. Some rectification of this situation is offered by this first ever translation into English of a representative selection of his writings, accompanied by the first substantial study on him in that language. In this way his work should be made much more accessible to the international community of linguists and of specialists in various branches of the social sciences, for whom Fabra's exclusive dedication to Catalan retains great relevance.

This volume helps us to understand that the current political disorders in Catalonia have deep cultural roots. It focuses on the rise of Catalan cultural, national and linguistic identity in the 20th century. What is happening in Catalonia? What lies behind its political conflicts? Catalan identity has been evolving for centuries, starting in early medieval ages (11th and 12lve centuries). It is not a modern phenomenon. The emergence of imperial Spain in the 16 c. and the French Ancien Régime in the 17 c. correlates with a decline of Catalan culture, which was politically absorbed by the Spanish state after the conquest of Barcelona in 1714. However, Catalan language and culture flourished again under the stimulus of the European Romantic Nationalism movement (known as the Renaixença in Catalonia). During the first Dictatorship (Primo de Rivera, 1923-1930), the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and the long Francoist era (1939-1975), Catalan language and culture were repressed, yet refurbished and reconstructed at the same time. This rise of a plural, complex, and non-homogeneous Catalan identity constitutes the subject matter of this volume. National conflicts that emerged later in the Spanish democratic state leant heavily on the life engagement and vital commitment experienced by the entrenched intellectual movements of the twentieth century in Catalonia, Valencian Country and the Balearic Islands. This book reveals the cultural and literary grassroots of these conflicts.

In a world increasingly dominated by visual sensation, our understanding of the role and influence of comics and cartoon humour in popular culture has become essential. This book offers a critical and cognitive focus that captures the changing fortunes of Catalan humour production against the shifting political landscape in the period 1898–1982. It considers how Catalan satire has been influenced by periods of relative calm as well as censorship, violence, war and dictatorship, and among its key features is its presentation of a continued cartooning tradition that was not ended by the installation of the Franco dictatorship, but which rather continued in a number of adapted forms, playing its own role in the evolution of the period. Thus, as well as introducing the most representative cartoonists and publications, the Catalan example is used to explore broader aspects of this complex communication form, opening new avenues for cultural, historical and socio-political research.

Since 1714 Catalan culture has had a troubled relationship with the Spanish state, which sometimes tolerated and sometimes repressed it. Nevertheless Catalan writing experienced a renaissance in the 1830s, and by the turn of the century had formed bridges with wider European culture through Modernisme. Under the banner of Noucentisme's call to order, Catalan writing became institutionalised in the early 20th century, only to become a culture of resistance or exile again under the dictatorships of Primo de Rivera and Franco. After 1939, as after 1714, new forms of narrative only gradually emerged from a time of crisis, but led ultimately to a great blossoming of Catalan fiction after Spain's transition into democracy and membership of the European Union. This invaluable volume applies a range of theoretical perspectives to the work of modern and contemporary Catalan writers, from Narcís Oller (1846-1930) to leading women writers such as Caterina Albert (1869-1966) and Mercè Rodoreda (1908-83) and to some of the postmodern masters - authors who, though valued by their fellow novelists across Europe, are still too little known outside Catalonia. Jordi Larios is Professor of Spanish Studies at the University of St Andrews, and Montserrat Lunati is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Cardiff University and Honorary Reader at the University of St Andrews.