Les glosses al Cant de Joan Antoni Almela en el quart centenari de la canonització de sant Vicent Ferrer (València, 1855)

Abstract

There is a long tradition in Catalan language of explanatory glosses to words considered obscure or outdated in ancient literary texts. This tradition dates back to the 16th century, with the publication of Ausiàs March's work, because of the change in the model of literary language that is produced with the Renaissance. This kind of annotations conti-nues during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries to facilitate the reading of the ancient texts to modern readers. The Valencian poet of the 19th century Joan Antoni Almela, concerned about the restoration of the literary language on the model of classical writers, uses this resource to facilitate to contemporary readers the reading of words considered outdated of his poem Cant (1855). We analyzed these glosses in detail and compared them with the sources that the author probably took into account, as well as with other texts and dictionaries.