Renovation in Verdaguerian studies: recognizing a classic

This study presents a historical summary of how Jacint Verdaguer went from being a well-known writer during his lifetime with his epic and religious poetry to a popular national myth stemming from his conflicts with the Church hierarchy and his death, and coming to be considered throughout the twentieth century as a classic and the outstanding Catalan writer of his period. All this—despite being shunned by sectors of literary criticism and the Church, and despite attempts to appropriate him by the dictatorships of Primo de Rivera and Franco. The recovery of the works and figure of Verdaguer, timidly begun in the 1930s, continuing throughout exile and resistance at home onward from the 1950s with scholarly efforts by those such as Josep M. de Casacuberta and biographers Josep Miracle, Sebastià Juan Arbó and Joan Torrent i Fàbregas, culminated in the 1980s with the inclusion of Verdaguer in university and secondary school studies, now as a classic, through the diligence of Joaquim Molas and Ricard Torrents and their disciples, and entities such as
the Societat Verdaguer, the scholarly journal Anuari Verdaguer and the international symposiums focusing on the writer and his period. All these actions have resulted in generating an intense, active movement spotlighting Verdaguer and his works.