"Building Bridges: Joan Salvat-Papasseit's Contribution to the Avant-Garde in Madrid "
by Arantxa Ascunce

In the summer of 1920 Joan Salvat-Papasseit (1894-1924), arguably the best-known poet of the Catalan avant-garde, published a series of five poems in Castilian in one of Spain's most influential literary magazines of that time: Grecia (Sevilla-Madrid, 1918-1920). Interestingly, these poems which comprise his only verse in Castilian do not appear in any of the anthologies of Salvat's completed poetic works. The purpose of this essay, then, is threefold: (1) To present and reproduce the five poems; (2) To contextualize the circumstances under which they appeared in addition to analyzing their content; and (3) To suggest that Salvat-Papasseit's role as a bridge between Barcelona and Madrid so as to offer at least a glimpse of an alternative, more unified version of the history of the Spanish avant-garde. Since the poets in Madrid never fully developed a Castilian version of Futurism but rather by 1919 fused some of its ideals into the mélange that was Ultraísmo, these five Castilian poems by Salvat may be seen as emblematic of what could have been a Castilian Futurist movement. Catalan Futurism was not Italian Futurism, but it shared many of its principles, and poets like Salvat tried to put those principles into practice. The publication of these poems in Madrid at this particular point in time proves that Salvat-Papasseit's contribution to Ultraísmo and, more generally, to the spirit of the avant-garde in Madrid, was considerably more important than literary histories have so far led us to believe.

"Aproximació a la segregació de iod en lleidatà
by Josefina Carrera-Sabaté

In this study I present a productive and perceptive analysis of the voiced and voiceless alveopalatal fricatives in lleidatà in order to analyze how yod segregation is used in this dialect. The results obtained from the analysis of 32 speakers allow observation of a variation in the yod segregation of the voiced alveopalatal fricative sounds, which can be explained by certain linguistic constraints. In the case of voiceless fricatives, the results establish a high number of glide outcomes, which is greater in cases related to the written language. A study of the speakers' subjectivity demonstrates parallelisms between the data from production and perception.

"Un joc poètic en proverbis. Edició i estudi paremiològic de Refranys rimats"
by Maria Conca and Josep Guia

This article edits anew, with modernized spelling and amending previous errata in fragments of difficult reading, the last poem in the Cançoner de l'Ateneu, an incomplete manuscript missing a few final pages. A printed edition of 1513 is also lost. We call the poem, anonymous and without title, Refranys rimats [Adages in verse]. Its employment of proverbs as a poetic game gives the work a Renaissance air, far from medieval didacticism. The Refranys rimats show significant points of contact with other works of the same period (Tirant lo Blanc, Espill, Procés de les olives, Refranys en prosa catalana glossats, etc.). We conjecture that the poem was written in Valencia towards the middle of the 15th century. The study of the 69 proverbs and the two idioms it contains involves identifying each proverb and subsequently applying the diacronic and contrastive methodology to its sources and innovation. The present study seeks to contribute to the history of Catalan proverb studies. It offers documentation of some proverbs that is a few centuries older than what has been known to date. It also identifies proverbs never before catalogued or known in other languages.

"El Dietari de Pere Gimferrer, una cruïlla d'escriptures"
by Anna Esteve

In this paper we provide an approach to the literary prose that Pere Gimferrer builds in the two volumes of his Dietari. We distinguish and characterize different tendencies that coexist and merge in his writing. We study how the author flirts with the narration from the essay, turns aside the paths of description and presentation of situations and characters (narrative prose), and rushes through the stream of lyrics (poetic prose), all without forgetting the exposition of the intellectual's thoughts and opinions. At last, the richness, experimentation, and total freedom that singularize Pere Gimferrer's literature emerge.

"Variació condicionada: aspectes qualitatius i quantitatius"
by Maria-Rosa Lloret

The goal of this paper is to show that, although variation sometimes affects a small number of items, it never is completely arbitrary. It is rather conditioned by the grammatical system of a language (qualitative factors) and the quantitative effects that this grammatical system causes when it applies to a specific lexicon. Examples are drawn primarily from the verbal system of Balearic Catalan. The analysis of the data further shows that, even though retrospectively it is possible to explain why variation occurs under certain circumstances, it does not seem possible to predict which change will inevitably take place in a given situation.

"Tempting Fate: The Case against Astrology and the Catalan Response"
by John Lucas

This paper applies Valerie Flint's thesis about the adoption of astrology and derivative forms of prognostication by the medieval Catholic Church to Catalan treatises on astrology. Two main arguments against the practice of magic in the Middle Ages actually favored the development of astrology and astrological magic. By demonstrating that astrology does not subjugate free will to celestial bodies or contravene God's authority, Christian astrologers smuggled it into the mainstream of scientific practice. This paper revels how Catalan scholars contributed to this defense, providing textual evidence from the thirteenth to the late fifteenth centuries. The use of these two arguments to defend astrology will become so embedded in the literature that, by the late fifteenth century, such defenses appear as commonplaces. We find them even in popular texts on astrological lore, far removed from their original context as part of academic and theological discourse.

"Macarrònic singular: el llatí en amor, firmesa i porfia de Francesc Fontanella"
by Jordi Raventós

A relevant virtue of Francesc Fontanella's Tragicomèdia d'amor, firmesa i porfia, one of the more important Catalan baroque dramatic plays, is the combination of serious tone with amusement and irony. The latter characteristics are quite obvious in the comic characters of the play, especially in Cassòlio, who is stigmatized as being a "macarrònic singular" because of the level of pedantry he shows by using Latin words throughout. Nevertheless, a good number of the Latin expressions that the author has this character voice come from Virgil's Aeneid, books III, IV, and V. This fact corroborates the knowledge that Fontanella had about the Mantuan poet, as it exalts the comical side of the play before the educated audience of its time.

"Francesc Eiximenis on Women: Complimentary or Conflicting Views"
by David J. Viera

The medieval Franciscan author, Francesc Eiximenis, wrote on the subject of woman in several treatises. In his early works, especially the Segon and Terç del Crestià, he underlined negative attitudes towards women, often recalling classical, patristic, and medieval authors. From the late 1380s to the end of the century, he began to describe women in a positive vein and to emphasize Mary's role in the Church--not only as the mother of Jesus, but also as a sacred person free of sin from the time of her conception. This study contrasts Eiximenis's view of women from his early works (Segon and Terç del Crestià ) to the Dotze, Llibre de les dones, and Llibre dels angels. In the early works, more specifically the "Tractat de luxúria," which is contained in the Terç, Eiximenis discussed mundane topics such as rape, marriage, jealousy, infidelity, separation, divorce, widowhood, literacy among women, menstruation, prostitution, among the realities of the time. Despite repetitious discussions of these topics previously contained in the "Tractat de luxúria," the Llibre de les dones conveys a more positive perception of women due to several reasons, especially within the social context, by going beyond the strictly moral theology and moral-didactic content of the "Tractat de luxúria."

"Anàlisi contrastiva interdialectal de la fraseologia: el cas de déu-n'hi-do, ausa(d)es/a gosa(d)es i espaiet"
by Pelegrí Sancho Cremades

Déu-n'hi-do, ausa(d)es/a gosa(d)es, and espaiet are improper interjections, resulting from the grammaticalization of a sentence (déu-n'hi-do), a prepositional phrase (ausa[d]es), and the diminutive form of an adverb (espaiet), respectively. From a pragmatic perspective, the basic function of these interjections is that of emphasis or intensification. Déu-n'hi-do, ausa(d)es/a gosa(d)es, and espaiet are not entirely equivalent, because they have followed different paths to grammaticalization. When used for emphasis, Déu-n'hi-do, ausa(d)es/a gosa(d)es, and espaiet do not differ substantially at the semantic or pragmatic level. On the other hand, they do present marked syntactic differences: Déu-n'hi-do is used only with emphatic quantitative constructions (such as Déu-n'hi-do, quin concert més divertit!), while ausades may be classified with these constructions (Ausades quin concert més divertit!) or may also take as complement a clause introduced by unstressed que (Ausades que va ser divertit el concert). The syntactic behavior of espaiet is parallel to that of Déu-n'hi-do. Used alone, ausades permits above all the contextual interpretation of the manifestation of the emphasized agreement, while déu-n'hi-do and espaiet admit the interpretation of a much greater variety of subjective attitudes on the part of the speaker, according to context and intonation.

"The lexicon of naval tactis in Ramon Muntaner's Crònica"
by William Sayers

Common Romance terms underlie naval maneuvering in the thirteenth-century Mediterranean, although a distinctive Catalan vocabulary emerged early on. Afrenellar was used of linking galleys at stem and stern by cables in order to keep ships at a uniform distance. Historians have speculated that this notion of "bridling" was extended to oar handling. Galley oars would have been drawn in amidships, reversed, then extended to adjacent vessels and lashed in place to create impromptu fighting platforms and block the passage of enemy ships. Yet in the documented instances, the bridle or check in question is a simple device placed over the looms to hold the raised oar at a uniform height from the sea surface, prompting the Venetian image of a galley as a double comb. Historical speculation on the naval encounters of the War of the Sicilian Vespers must be informed by an accurate understanding of the technical vocabulary.