Catalan Studies in Culture and Linguistics - Böcker

This volume gathers a superbcollection of articles on current research topicsfocused on the Catalan language andculture of the Catalan-speaking lands. The twenty contributions offer an overview of the current state of Catalan Studies and deal with medieval, early modern and contemporary Catalan literature, including the intersection of literature and painting or literature and film. There are also contributions on Linguistics, particularly inthe fields of lexicography and phraseology or neology as applied to the Catalan language. Finally, the volume includes some proposals for the improvement and promotion of　the teaching of Catalan language and culture.

This book is concerned with the study of neologisms in Catalan, specifically with the description of their features. It is based on the results of the research project “Neologismes per a l’actualització del diccionari normatiu” (NADIC) (studying neologisms to update the standard Catalan dictionary), financed by Institut d’Estudis Catalans, and carried out by the Network of Catalan Language Neology Observatories between 2015 and 2017. The chapters are organised into four main sections, dealing with general aspects of neology with the inclusion into a dictionary of certain types of neologisms as well as specific case studies, and questions on language variation since lexicography plays a central role in the construction of the standard language.

The question of gender has been ignored sometimes or mystified in historical literary analyses. This book focuses on contemporary Catalan literature and adopts a gender perspective that is difficult to overlook today. The very limited number of female authors in earlier times – whose numbers are increasing as more and more names of female writers consigned to oblivion by the historical canon are being unearthed – provided the justification for their discrimination. This volume contributes to the analysis of those past views on gender (all gender perspectives) as they appear through the lense of contemporary Catalan literature. In the social roles they adopt, female characters act, express, and assert themselves in the language they use and are based on the society of which they form part.

This book provides multifaceted analyses of everyday interpersonal violence in the Kingdom of Valencia and Catalonia between the 14th and 17th centuries. Employing qualitative and microhistorical approaches, its contributors weave a narrative tapestry where revenge among religious minorities, the impact of war on Muslim rural communities, and the phenomenon of banditry intertwine to reveal the social and cultural complexity of the era. Furthermore, its chapters explore piracy and mercenary activities, uncovering how these practices influenced social and economic dynamics. Their contributors also delve into the trials against witches and the repression of heretical deviations or non-normative behaviors, offering a critical view on how these events were framed within the struggle for power and social control. The cumulative work of the authors not only sheds light on dark and forgotten aspects of history, but also prompts reflections on the nature of violence and its role in the construction of collective identities. With meticulous research and an interdisciplinary focus, this book is essential for understanding the history of violence in the Iberian Peninsula and its transcendence on contemporary society.

Joan Fuster offers us in Poetry, Aphorisms, Diary, Vignettes and Drawings a collection of maxims, apothegms, and aphorisms that constitute a series of philosophical reflections on a variety of topics. The author purposely rejects a fully-developed narrative style as well as a more methodical and comprehensive philosophical approach to the presentation of his ideas. Instead, he chooses the seemingly innocuous and more humble style of the laconic and brief note to offer us what could be termed as his inconsequential musings on life. But Fuster is not alone in this way of approaching the essay and the philosophical genre. In fact, he belongs to a long list of philosophers who have prioritized this form and style in their writings, from the classical Greek and Roman periods to the writings of Montaigne, one of his main sources, and the encyclopedists. The author of Nosaltres, els valencians (1965) and coiner of the successful term països catalans is here at his best ruminating on a multiplicity of ideas, surprising the reader with his acute perceptions, and suggesting myriad possibilities of thought and reflection.

Languages tend to be identified as basically steady and uniform even if evolution has performed a considerable amount of recoding operations. The overlapping area of individual forms of a code are the arena of transcoding negotiations and adaptations leading to linguistic change. Recoding and transcoding are in the spotlight in this book aiming to the connection between analytical approaches traditionally severed into independent research fields. Translation, subtitling, proofreading, history literaturising, phonetic perception and semantic interpretation, and language change all share a point discernable only if the code is understood as essentially dynamic. Although most of the chapters work on Catalan, this book offers theoretical approaches applicable to any other language.