A Unitary Catalan-Occitan Language in the Early Modern Period: The Exaltation of Apitxat Valencian

Abstract

This chapter scrutinizes the ideological and political use of the term “Valencian language” in the Early Modern Period and its implications for the question of (dis)continuity of the Catalan and Occitan languages in the same period. Valencian linguistic secessionism gained particular vigor during the sixteenth century via metalinguistic discourses that were predicated upon the historical process by which a unified language from the past, called either llemosi or Catalan, gave rise to a new and different language. In other cases, texts described Valencian as a variety that had undergone differentiation due to contact with Castilian. Still other historical accounts of the language postulated that the varieties spoken in the Principality of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands preserved the features of a Medieval linguistic unity, whereas the Valencian variety was alleged to have acquired a distinct identity. Relying upon analysis of a sonnet written in 1600 by Jaume Orts in praise of the Valencian saint Vincent Ferrer (1350–1419), entitled “Soneto en una lengua que es juntamente valenciana y castellana” (“Sonnet in a language that is both Valencian and Spanish”), I argue that Valencian linguistic secessionism may be interpreted as a continuation and exaltation of the virtues of language mixture that emerged with the birth of Occitan.