Abstract

In 1764, Antoni Portella i Enric presented his book titled Nou methode per aprendre la llengua llatina. Primera part dels Rudiments (in English: A new method for learning Latin. Part one of the rudiments) to the Palma Town Hall. The book exemplified Port-Royal dictates and the fashionable educational ideas of the 17th century; it was successfully used in Minorcan schools, but it did not catch on in Majorca. The fact that it was written in Catalan, a language that was commonly used on the smaller island subject to the Treaty of Utrecht, and competed with grammar books created by experts who questioned its adequacy, put it at the center of a debate on the methodology for teaching Latin, as was common across Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, but with the addition of the conflict between the two vernacular languages, Catalan and Spanish. This work deals with the controversy of ideas about the Catalan, Spanish and Latin languages that was lived in the second half of the eighteenth century in Mallorca and Menorca in the field of education; as well as the grammatical works in use.

Abstract

The present work states the existence of a short theatrical piece represented in 1775 during the celebrations for the coming to power of Matías de Valdivieso as corregidor (crown official) of Piura. Prior to the transcription of the text, it summarizes and comments its contents, and identifies its features as typical of the post-Calderon courtier loa (introductory piece) gender, conceived not as a laudatory discourse but as a «miniature comedy». Also, it conducts an approximation to the circumstances in which the loa was represented and which explain its conservation in records of a judicial process because of insults against in Piura’s authorities.