The Valencian Ausiàs March (1400-1459) was one of the greatest poets writing in Europe in the fifteenth century. His work is characterized by a powerful and unique voice and by the constant innovation that allowed him not only to develop traditional genres, but to compose poems that virtually created genres of their own. This selection includes poems on love, a cycle of six compositions on grief, a long poem on God and predestination, others of praise and vilification, or on philosophical themes. While March has previously been translated into English prose, this anthology offers translations that, more than an aid to understanding the medieval Catalan, aspire to be poems that can be enjoyed in English without constant reference to the original. The translator has worked for several decades on Ausiàs March, and has produced a critical edition and two anthologies, as well as prose translations. ROBERT ARCHER holds the Cervantes Chair of Spanish at King's College London. Published in association with Editorial Barcino

Ausiàs March: Verse Translations of Thirty Poems (Textos B, 48)

Literature & Fiction

March, Ausiàs

History & Criticism

Barcino-Tamesis

Before its definitive fall into Turkish hands, the Byzantine Empire was the target of adventurers of many nations. Outstanding among these groups was the Almogaver army led by Roger of Flor, composed of mercenaries hardened in the war between the Catalan and Angevin dynasties for domination of Sicily. The Catalan presence in Constantinople aroused suspicion among the Greek nobility who assassinated Roger of Flor and tried to exterminate his men. The devastating reaction of those who escaped the slaughter led to Catalan control of broad swathes of the Empire, including Athens. Ramon Muntaner, one of the ringleaders of the expedition, recounted the adventures of the Almogaver army in the eastern Mediterranean in the fascinating section of his Chronicle translated here. The preface is by N. D. Hillgarth. Dr. Robert D. Hughes is a translator and researcher with particular expertise in the fields of fine art, the history of ideas and Catalan culture. Published in association with Editorial Barcino

The Catalan Expedition to the East: from the `Chronicle' of Ramon Muntaner (Textos B, 49)

Muntaner, Ramón

Francesc Eiximenis is an outstanding figure in the ranks of the mendicant orders who, in the late Middle Ages, strove to educate the lower echelons of society. Born in Gerona, around 1330, probably to a comfortable middle-class family, Eiximenis entered the Franciscan order at a very early age, studied in Oxford, and probably also in Paris, and obtained the degree of master of theology in Toulouse. Later he combined teaching with the composing of his works. Among these stands out the monumental and widely known Lo Crestià (The Christian), in which Eiximenis aimed to include all contemporary university knowledge, adapted for a lay public whose basic level of instruction was far below that of clerics. The same didactic purpose is seen in the Libro de los ángeles (Book of the Angels), the Libro de las mujeres (Book of the Women) and the Vita Christi. Eiximenis, by then bishop of Elna, died in 1409. Among the many themes that recur in his extensive literary production, this anthology concentrates on his ideas on the transmission of knowledge, on education and on culture. The introduction and selection of texts is by David Guixeras and Xavier Renedo.BR&gt; ROBERT D. HUGHES is a translator and researcher with particular expertise in the fields of fine art, the history of ideas and Catalan culture. Published in association with Editorial Barcino

Francesc Eiximenis: An Anthology (Textos B, 50)

Francesc Eiximenis

The Book of Sent Soví, composed around the middle of the fourteenth century, is the oldest surviving culinary text in Catalan. It is anonymous and, like the majority of medieval cookery books, is the product of a complex process of transmission, with multiple manuscript copies and readers who have left their mark on it. The contents are eminently practical. Successive cooks have recorded their own methods of preparing the dishes and recipes included, blending several culinary traditions in a single work. Sent Soví is also a reliable source of information on the cookery of the territories of the Crown of Aragon before the revolution caused by the arrival of products from the Americas. This edition includes both an English translation, by Robin Vogelzang, and the original Catalan version. It has been the editor's aim to clarify the difficult passages in the book - sometimes corrupted because of the complex manuscript tradition - so that it can be understood as easily as possible by its twenty-first-century readers. JOAN SANTANACH lectures on medieval literature at the University of Barcelona. Published in association with Editorial Barcino.

The Book of Sent Sovi: Medieval recipes from Catalonia (Textos B)

Ramon Llull was a highly original medieval writer and thinker. Direct contact with Moslem culture during his early years in Majorca, soon after the Christian reconquest, furnished him with a vision of the "Other" quite unique among medieval European intellectuals. It was not, however, until his thirties that he abandoned the courtly life, immersed himself in theological and philosophical studies and began his sustained campaign of conversion. He travelled on many occasions throughout Europe in search of royal and papal support and undertook several missions to north Africa, in the course of one of which he was stoned and imprisoned. Despite his many travels he found time to compose more than 260 works, in Catalan and Latin, many of which related to his famous "Art", a method for religious discussion with scientific and logical applications that subsequently influenced Giordano Bruno and Liebniz. When he was almost eighty years old, Llull dictated the story of his life to a group of Carthusians in Paris, leaving us this fascinating autobiography. This edition includes both an English translation and the original Latin version. Published in association with Editorial Barcino. ANTHONY BONNER is a translator and scholar who has published extensively on Ramon Llull. Table of Contents IntroductionA Note on the TranslationThe Book of the Order of ChivalryBibliography

Ramon Llull: A Contemporary Life (Textos B, 53)

Biographies & Memoirs

Llull, Ramón

Community & Culture

The Life of Christ (Vita Christi), written by the abbess Isabel de Villena, is the only literary work to have been preserved in Catalan and to bear the signature of a woman during the Middle Ages. It was composed to provide spiritual direction for the nuns within the community of Poor Clares which Sor (i.e. Sister) Isabel oversaw at the Convent of the Holy Trinity in Valencia. The work was only able to emerge from obscurity by accident. In 1497 Queen Isabel of Castile, the wife of Ferdinand of Catalonia-Aragon, who had heard news of the book's existence, asked Sor Isabel's successor for a copy. The new Abbess, Sor Aldonça, responded by bringing the work to press. Queen Isabel's interest in Sor Isabel's book was understandable. The former abbess had been the daughter of the refined and restless Marquess of Villena, and was herself educated at Court, a milieu with which she maintained very positive relations throughout her life. As an abbess, what's more, she carried out important reforms at the convent and became a valued and respected figure within the dynamic cultural world of the Valencia of her day. Isabel de Villena's Vita Christi has often been interpreted as a response, delivered from the serenity of the cloister, to the misogyny and satire against the female gender emanating from certain books written at that time. Sor Isabel's work is a re-evaluation of the role women played in the life of Jesus Christ, a role at variance with the subsidiary one ascribed to them by the majority of commentators.

Portraits of Holy Women: Selections from the Vita Christi (Textos B)

Hughes, Robert D.

Villena, Isabel de

Curbet, Joan

Catalonia's towering Romantic poet and rebel priest, Jacint Verdaguer (1845-1902), delves deep into the Catalan imaginary in his foundational long poem Mount Canigó (1886), recounting the historical and legendary mix, both tragicand triumphant, of the medieval origins of modern Catalonia. The collision between duty and love is mirrored by the symbolic conflict between, on the one hand, a powerful folk mythology rooted in the natural geography and, on theother, the widely institutionalized universalism of Christianity concomitant to the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula. Rich in lyrical and thematic correspondence with long poems ranging from La chanson de Roland, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and Spenser's Faerie Queene to Milton's Paradise Lost, Longfellow's Evangeline and Tennyson's Idylls of the King, Verdaguer's masterful verse rivals all the legendary magic and wonder of the mountains themselves.BR>  Jacint Verdaguer is regarded as one of the greatest poets of Catalan literature.  Ronald Puppo is the translator of Selected Poems of Jacint Verdaguer: A Bilingual Edition   Published in association with EditorialBarcino.

Mount Canigó: A Tale of Catalonia (Textos B, 59)

Verdaguer, Jacint

United States

The Romance of Evast and Blaquerna is a novel in which Ramon Llull rebelled against secular literature of chivalry and the court in general, which was so successful in his time. Written around 1283, it tells the fictional biography of Blaquerna, a virtuous young man who aspires to be a hermit, not a knight, but who on encountering the disorder of the world is obliged to remain in it. In his reform efforts, Blaquerna passes through several estates before being elected Holy Father in Rome, allowing him to intervene in all Christendom and work decidedly in favor of the conversion of infidels. With everyone on the path to salvation, he may eventually retire and devote himself to the contemplative life. In this new situation, Blaquerna wrote the Book of the Lover and the Beloved, one of the top works of mystical literature of all time. Published in association with Editorial Barcino. Ramon Llull (1232-1316) was a mystic, missionary, philosopher and author of narrative and poetry. He is credited with writing the first major work of Catalan literature. Robert D. Hughes is a specialist in medieval Catalan literature and a widely published translator.

Romance of Evast and Blaquerna (Textos B, 60) (Volume 61)

Ramon Llull wrote the Doctrina pueril between 1274 and 1276 to provide minimum knowledge to those people---children, but also adults--- who did not have the opportunity to acquire a sufficient doctrinal and intellectual education. In the late thirteenth century this meant stressing the basics of Christian doctrine and also accessing some aspects of general culture. The most important part of the Doctrina is dedicated to the catechism (articles of faith, commandments, sacraments, vices and virtues, etc.). Especially interesting, however, are the more general sections, encyclopedic in nature, on issues such as the three monotheistic religions of the Mediterranean, the lessons that could be studied in the medieval universities, and other medical and scientific subjects. Published in association with Editorial Barcino.

Doctrina pueril: A Primer for the Medieval World (Textos B, 61) (Volume 61)

Reference

In autumn 1397, Viscount Ramon de Perellós, a Catalan nobleman, soldier and diplomat, left the papal palace in Avignon to travel to St Patrick's Purgatory in Donegal, in the northwest of Ireland. St Patrick's Purgatory, an underground cavern on Station Island in Lough Derg, was famous throughout Europe as a gateway to the next world, and the Viscount wanted to ascertain if the soul of his recently deceased friend and master, King John I of Aragon, was, if not in Heaven, then at least in Purgatory. Ramon spent twenty-four hours in the cavern, where he claimed to have travelled through the nine fields of Purgatory, accompanied by demons, before entering the Earthly Paradise and catching a glimpse of Heaven. This book provides a richly annotated translation of Ramon's account of his journeys, both earthly and spiritual. An extensive introduction sets his Viatge al Purgatori in context, examining Ramon's life, the factors that motivated the trip, the history of St Patrick's Purgatory, the literary influences on the account, its historicity, its afterlife and its textual history. The Viatge notably provides important first-hand observations on Gaelic society and customs, by a cosmopolitan traveller with a keen eye for detail, and went on indirectly to inspire Lope de Vega's El mayor prodigio o El purgatorio en vida, and Calderón de la Barca's (1600-1681) El purgatorio de San Patricio. Part travelogue, part vision literature, with aspects of hagiography, homily, autobiography, chivalric romance and anthropological essay, the text is a fascinating and entertaining window into a medieval Catalan nobleman's world view.the account, its historicity, its afterlife and its textual history. The Viatge notably provides important first-hand observations on Gaelic society and customs, by a cosmopolitan traveller with a keen eye for detail, and went on indirectly to inspire Lope de Vega's El mayor prodigio o El purgatorio en vida, and Calderón de la Barca's (1600-1681) El purgatorio de San Patricio. Part travelogue, part vision literature, with aspects of hagiography, homily, autobiography, chivalric romance and anthropological essay, the text is a fascinating and entertaining window into a medieval Catalan nobleman's world view.the account, its historicity, its afterlife and its textual history. The Viatge notably provides important first-hand observations on Gaelic society and customs, by a cosmopolitan traveller with a keen eye for detail, and went on indirectly to inspire Lope de Vega's El mayor prodigio o El purgatorio en vida, and Calderón de la Barca's (1600-1681) El purgatorio de San Patricio. Part travelogue, part vision literature, with aspects of hagiography, homily, autobiography, chivalric romance and anthropological essay, the text is a fascinating and entertaining window into a medieval Catalan nobleman's world view.the account, its historicity, its afterlife and its textual history. The Viatge notably provides important first-hand observations on Gaelic society and customs, by a cosmopolitan traveller with a keen eye for detail, and went on indirectly to inspire Lope de Vega's El mayor prodigio o El purgatorio en vida, and Calderón de la Barca's (1600-1681) El purgatorio de San Patricio. Part travelogue, part vision literature, with aspects of hagiography, homily, autobiography, chivalric romance and anthropological essay, the text is a fascinating and entertaining window into a medieval Catalan nobleman's world view. literature, with aspects of hagiography, homily, autobiography, chivalric romance and anthropological essay, the text is a fascinating and entertaining window into a medieval Catalan nobleman's world view.

Journey to St Patrick’s Purgatory (Textos B, 62)

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