ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to examine the role which literature has played within modern Catalanism. It discusses the importance of Catalan-language literature to political Catalanism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and examines how the dictatorship of Franco affected the relationship between the two. The aim of this is twofold: to establish the reasons for the equation of literature with Catalanism, and to show how Catalan literature has been politicized as a result. The chapter looks at literature in Catalan after 1939, to see whether indeed literature, language and Catalanism had become inseparable 'per sempre mes'. From 1939 until 1953, the major champions of Catalan culture and identity were those who had managed to escape to Europe or America. Several important organizations arose in the late 1950s and early '60s which put Catalan letters on a much more stable footing than they had previously enjoyed.
