Ausiàs March
Template:Short description Script error: No such module "Infobox".Template:Template otherScript error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". Ausiàs March (Script error: No such module "IPA".; 1400Template:SndMarch 3, 1459) was a Valencian poet and knight from Gandia, Valencia. He is considered one of the most important poets of the "Golden Century" (Segle d'or) of Catalan literature.
Biography
Not much is known of March's life. He was born in approximately 1400 to a Valencian noble family. His father, Pere March, was himself a poet and served at the court of the younger brother of King Alfonso IV, Peter. His uncle, Jaume March II, was also a poet. March was one of the two children of Pere's second wife, Lionor of Ripoll; he had a younger sister, Peirona.[1]
In 1413, the still-young March became head of his family—part of the Valencian petty nobility—upon the death of his father. From a very young age he took part in the expeditions that King Alfons el Magnànim carried out in the Mediterranean. After returning from these expeditions in 1427, he settled in Gandia. After his return, he would never again leave the region where he was born. March was twice married: first to Isabel Martorell (sister of the writer Joanot Martorell), and later to Joana Escorna.
In 1450, he moved from Gandia to Valencia. It was there that he died on March 3, 1459. While March himself was buried in his family's chapel at the Valencia Cathedral, his two wives and family are buried in the Monastery of Sant Jeroni de Cotalba.[2] Five illegitimate children but no legitimate heirs have been attributed to him.
Poetry
Inheriting an easy fortune from his father, Pere March—the treasurer to the Duke of Gandia—and enjoying the powerful patronage of Charles of Viana, prince of Aragon, March was able to devote himself to poetical composition. He was an undisguised follower of Petrarch, carrying the imitation to such a point that he addressed his Cants d'amor (love songs) to a lady whom he professed to have seen first in church on Good Friday.[3] So far as the difference of language allows, he reproduced the rhythmical cadences of his model, but this should be qualified as the medieval tradition of locus communis requested this following. This is something Petrarch himself did and it need not to be stressedScript error: No such module "Unsubst"..[4] March is a very original and idiosyncratic poet. In the Cants de mort (death hymns) he touches a note of brooding sentiment peculiar to himself.[3] It can be saidScript error: No such module "Unsubst". that he developed Petrarch's rhetoric and used it for more inner psychological meditations, as other major poets such a Camões and Shakespeare would.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".
March was one of the first poets to use the local vernacular, Valencian, instead of the troubadour language, Occitan.Script error: No such module "Unsubst". His poems are marked by obscurity, a sometimes monotonous morbidity, and a conflicting battle between desire and morality, achieved at its apex in the great Cant Spiritual.Script error: No such module "Unsubst". He was fully entitled to the supremacyTemplate:According to whom? which he enjoyed among his contemporaries, and the success of his innovation no doubt encouraged Boscán to introduce the Italian metres into Castilian.Script error: No such module "Unsubst". His verses were transmitted in manuscript tradition until its first print edition in Valencian in 1543, but they had already become known through the Spanish translation in 1539.[3]
March's poetry has been set to music by Raimon, Joan Brudieu and other composers.[5]
Gallery
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Portrait at the Palace of the Marqués de Dosaigües, Valencia
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Statue of March at the Central Municipal Library of Valencia
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Monument in Gandia
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Monument on the premises of a secondary school in Barcelona
See also
Notes
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- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Las Provincias. "Hallan en Sant Jeroni de Cotalba los restos de las dos esposas y el padre de Ausiàs March". Published 14 November 2016.
- ↑ a b c One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Script error: No such module "template wrapper".
- ↑ For a thorough treatment of imitatio, see Thomas M. Greene's The Light in Troy
- ↑ Four settings by Brudieu: Fantasiant, Amor a mi descobre. Si fos Amor substança rahonable. Lir entre carts, lo meu voler se tempra. Plena de seny, donau-me una crosta. on CD accompanying book, Magraner, Charles. Fantasiant, Música y poesía para Ausiàs March CDM 0927, Valencia 2009
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References
External links
- Ausiàs March in the AELC (Association of Writers in the Catalan Language), Template:In lang
- Template:Lletra
- A key anthology translated to English by the Anglo-Catalan Society.
- Biography and some poems
- English verse translations of poem I, poem IV, and poem XXVIII
- Template:Librivox author
- Pages with script errors
- Pages with broken file links
- Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
- 1400 births
- 1459 deaths
- Catalan-language poets
- Medieval Catalan-language writers
- 15th-century Spanish poets
- People from Gandia
- Writers from the Valencian Community
- Monastery of Sant Jeroni de Cotalba
- 15th-century writers from the Crown of Aragon