Literary history and periodization
The history questions ask you to place an author, a work or a movement on a timeline and to justify the placement with two or three features. The syllabus runs from the thirteenth century to the present, with a specific Balearic dimension that examiners like to test.
The backbone
- Edat Mitjana: Ramon Llull (Blanquerna, Llibre d'Amic e Amat), the chronicles of Jaume I, Desclot and Muntaner, Ausiàs March and the cant espiritual, chivalric fiction - Curial e Güelfa and Tirant lo Blanc, printed in Valencia in 1490 - plus Roís de Corella and Sor Isabel de Villena.
- Decadència (16th–18th c.): displacement of Catalan from the court and from print, with a slow recovery of learned prose.
- Renaixença: 1833, Aribau's La Pàtria; the restored Jocs Florals (1859); Verdaguer (L'Atlàntida, Canigó), Guimerà and the romantic historic drama.
- Modernisme: Maragall and la paraula viva, the comte Arnau myth, symbolism and vitalism.
- Noucentisme: from about 1906, Eugeni d'Ors's Glosari, Josep Carner, Guerau de Liost; classicism, order, civic project.
- Avantguarda: Salvat-Papasseit, J. V. Foix, and later Brossa's visual poetry.
- Postguerra: Espriu (Cementiri de Sinera, La pell de brau), Rodoreda, Villalonga (Bearn), Pedrolo, Fuster.
- Mallorca: the Escola Mallorquina (Costa i Llobera, Alcover, Maria Antònia Salvà), then Blai Bonet (El mar, 1958), Villalonga, Marià Villangómez, Miquel Àngel Riera, Carme Riera.
Worked example
Question: Situa Blai Bonet i esmenta'n una obra. A full answer: post-war Catalan narrative and poetry in Mallorca, existentialist and religious register, with El mar (1958) as the reference title; it belongs to the generation that rebuilt Catalan literature after 1939. The reasoning: period first, geography second, poetics third, one title to anchor it. Naming the work without the coordinates earns half the mark.
Traps
Collapsing Renaixença into Modernisme (they are successive, not synonymous); attributing Tirant lo Blanc to Corella instead of Martorell; mislabelling the Escola Mallorquina as Noucentisme; dateless answers, when the paper expects at least one date per movement.