Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the coexistence of Spanish with Catalan and Portuguese respectively in Catalonia, the Kingdom of Valencia and Portugal in the 16th and 17th century. Therefore we use the concept of literary disglossia, based on the concept proposed by Fishman. We propose two hypotheses to guide the analysis: first, the language praises are part of a typical phenomenon of that time, the literary pre-eminence battles between territories and second, that there are, to a higher or to a lower degree, authors in the three territories who reject to use the prestigious language, because they consider that this would jeopardize the purpose of glorification of the territory. Results show that in the three territories the language is used indeed as an excellence of it in order to emphasize its dignity. In Catalonia and Portugal there are several authors who reject the use of Spanish to glorify their own language, while in the Kingdom of Valencia most authors do not see any contradiction between praising their language, but doing it in another one.