<i>Canigó</i>, un poema romàntic?

Abstract

Jacint Verdaguer was influenced by the classicist school of Vic, but also by Milà i Fontanals and Marià Aguiló. In his youth he tried his hand at epic poetry in various ways: in the classical style with Dos Màrtirs de ma pàtria, in the Mistral tradition with Amors d'en Jordi i na Guideta, and in the romantic style with Colom and, after fifteen years of elaboration, with L'Atlantida. But it was only after the publication of Montserrat (1880) that he chose a «national» theme for his epic Canigó (1885), the origins of the Catalan fatherland that emerged in the struggle against the Arab occupiers and the demonic mountain fairies of the Pyrenees. Born out of a meditation on the ruined monasteries, the poem became an allegorical hymn to the restoration of Catalonia, in line with the concept of the conservative Catalanism of the last quarter of the 19th century. Although written between 1880 and 1885, Canigó can be classified as a romantic poem.