Jaume Casas i Pallerol and the poetic microhistory of the Renaixença

Abstract

Microhistory is a current within general historiography that studies particular aspects of society that may be relevant to the general historical vision. In literature, attention to authors, literary movements or schools that have been neglected by general literary historiography can provide interesting data that, without having to contradict the schemes inherited from the theoretical tradition, allow a more truthful approach to reality. This article analyses the work and literary postulates of the poet Jaume Casas i Pallerol, a peasant and day labourer of humble extraction who participated in several Jocs Florals and disseminated the ideas of Josep Anselm Clavé. He, like other poets from his time and his popular condition, does not appear in the canonical texts about the Renaixença, but they contributed their work to it. Through the information present in newspaper libraries, in order to detect the author’s access to poetry magazines and contacts with other writers, known or anonymous, the study will delve into a microscopic reality that will allow us to expand the macroscopic perspective of the literary movement in which it is inserted.