Tot Barcelona: "fin de siècle" XVIII, segons una família de manuscrits literaris de Nova York i Madrid

Abstract

This is a critical sampling of twenty-four verse excerpts contained in the Hispanic Society of America’s manuscript HC380/632, Poesies varies, as well as in Biblioteca Nacional de Espana (BNE) ms. 1595. Both manuscript collections, combined with a third , BNE ms. 1595bis, offer an exemplary and rather complete collection of Catalan- and Spanish-language poetry indicative of the late rococo in Barcelona and environs. Of special note is a staunch and repeated defense of the Catalan language and typical customs, a critical commentary on the Barcelona industrialist Joan Canaleta, satirical barbs aimed at the Catholic Church’s covetousness, an acute sense of modernity, both in discourse and subject matter, and precise geographical points on the map of late eighteenth-century Barcelona, all of which lead us directly back to the Raval district and the current Institut d’Estudis Catalans. These three aforementioned, long ignored-poetry collections afford the reader valuable insights into the society that populate...