CATALAN LANGUAGE AND LITER ATURE. One of the group of Romance lan guages (q.v.). It is spoken to-day by upward of 3,500.000 people: (1) In the eastern portion of the Pyrenees and along the coast of the Spanish Peninsula, including the whole of the French Department of Pyami-es Orientales, and the seven Spanish provinces of Gerona, Barcelona, Tarragona, Lerida, Valencia, Alicante. and Cas tellim de la Plana; (2) in the Balearic Islands; (3) in the district of Alghero in Sardinia ; (4) in some parts of Cuba and the Argentine Re public. It is not a separate branch, lying mid way between the Spanish and Provencal, but merely an offshoot of the latter, which during the Middle Ages raised itself for a time to the dignity of a literary language, and so is still treated separately by students of the Romance languages. The chief peculiarities of Catalan are: (1) The prevailing use, in the conjugation in -ir, of the so-called inchoative form, a form known to sonic extent to all the Romance lan guages, excepting the Spanish group. (2) The formation of a number of perfect participles fuom the infinitive stein, instead of the perfect stem. (3) The treatment of unaccented final vowels, a being retained and the other vowels dropped under the same circumstances as in French and Provencal. (4) The retention of the original pronunciation of the Latin ii where the French and Provencal have ii. This is the one important difference between Catalan and the Gallic group, and has not yet been satis facto•ily explained.
In no other of the Romance literatures are prose and poetry so sharply differentiated. Throughout the earlier part of the :Middle Ages, down to the end of the Thirteenth Century, the Catalan poets continued to write in the lan guage of the Troubadours, a more or less im perfect Provenal; and even at a much later date, when the language had become better adapted to poetry, thanks to its numerous prose writers, the Catalan poets still clung to certain words and idioms characteristic of the Trouba dours or the poetry of the Toulouse Academy.
In Catalan poetry, three periods are recognized: (1) That from King Peter IV.. who in 1378 wrote coldes to his son, King Martin of Sicily. down to nearly the middle of the Fifteenth Century.
(2) The middle portion of the Fifteenth Cen tury. which owes its fame to the works of Auzias Nardi and the younger poets who gather round him as their head. and is characterized by a strong coloring of Italian influence. In the Cants (ranter and rants de more of Auzias :March there are many poems of real beauty; but they a re marred by his obscurity, which, in deed, is a characteristic fault of the school.
(3) The period of decline has no name of real merit, but is interesting to the student for the changes it shows in its metres and the first symptoms of Castilian influence. While the Catalan poetry was an exotic production, the prose was a more original growth, and shows some names worthy of remembrance. Among these the philosopher Ramon Lull, usually called Raymond Lally (died 1315), and the historians luntaner and Deselot deserve mention. After the Sixteenth Century the language sank once more to the level of a patois. Recently, through the renewal of the old-time jochs florals, or floral games, at Barcelona. (1839), popular enthusiasm has been aroused. resulting in a revival of the language for literary purposes, which the fra ternal relations established with time Felibres, or modern Proveneal poets, have done much to promote. The most notable modern Catalan writers are the poets Balaguer and Verdaguer. The best works upon the Catalan language are : y Fontanals. Estudios de lengua eatalana (Bareelona, 1875 ) ; 1\lorel-Fatio, in Criiber's Grundriss der 'romanisehen Philologie (Strass burg. 1888). For Catalan literature, consult Illorel-Fatio. in Crrther's Grundriss, Vol. II. (114trassburg, 1892).