The personal memoir in the Catalan lands (16th-19th centuries)

Abstract

The written tradition in southern Europe becomes more than just a category when we examine personal writings from the Modern Age. They are the writings of an entire society, one that is mostly prosperous but both urban and especially rural, whose authors set down their personal memoirs primarily to understand their everyday lives and the events that were affecting society, both individually and collectively. If we compare them to the rest of Europe, Catalonia and all the Catalan lands conserve an important number of memoirs by private individuals, along with others that merit special attention because of either their content or the way they can be used.

Keywords

• egodocuments
• personal writings
• literacy
• written culture
• women