Un món de mones. La persistència de Robert Robert

Abstract

Josep Pla claimed that some articles of Robert Robert, published between 1865 and 1866 in Un tros de paper, a weekly satirical magazine, are among the best Catalan prose written in La Reinaxença, the Romantic period in Catalonia, characterized by the recuperation of the Catalan as a literary language. Pla went farther in his praise of Robert by adding that he was even more interesting than Verdaguer, who was never disputed as the best writer of the whole period, both in verse and prose, and the most decisive influence in the development of modern Catalan prose. As it has already been explained by criticism, the purpose of Josep Pla is not to despise Verdaguer's prose but to use Robert as a forerunner of a tradition Pla himself belong to. The author of this article tries to explain, with a general commentary of Robert's prose, why he shares the point of view of Pla about the importance of the genre started in Catalonia by the writing of Robert Robert.