Josep Miracle

Josep Miracle i Montserrat (9 January 1904 – 19 November 1998) was a Spanish writer, editor and linguist in the Catalan language.

Biography

Josep Miracle was born in Barcelona. He was self-taught in the cultural circles of Sants. He was a disciple of Pompeu Fabra and worked at the publishing house Editorial Selecta as a proofreader and then as literary director; he was also director of Llibreria Catalònia.

He wrote naturalistic novels — most notably Seixanta minuts, a portrait of working-class Sants at the beginning of the 20th century — and also sporadically wrote poetry and plays. But he stood out for his biographies, which were extensive, documented, concise and often polemical. He wrote biographies of Jacint Verdaguer, Josep Maria Folch i Torres and Fabra, as well as essays on other important figures such as Joan Maragall, Àngel Guimerà and Víctor Català. Miracle also expanded the grammar and lexicography of Fabra's Diccionari General de la Llengua Catalana (1966) and published several grammars and dictionaries. In 1983 he was awarded the St George's Cross by the Government of Catalonia.

Dissatisfied with some of the normative criteria on Catalan of the Institute for Catalan Studies, he published in Andorra his definitive Diccionari Nacional de la llengua catalana (1993), a work characterised by its fidelity to the spirit and the letter of Pompeu Fabra's works. His collection can be consulted in the Sants archive and in a library in Vallvidrera, where he lived for many years and which bears his name. His controversial figure and work are particularly important insofar as, through his editorship of the publications of Editorial Selecta, he influenced the Catalan literary canon of his time.

Works

Poetry

• Perfums de jardí (1921)
• De l'encís dels dos amors (1922)

Novels and other prose writings

• Vides inútils (1930)
• Blanca o bruna? (1931)
• Pel foc de la prova (1932)
• Un ram a la finestra (1932)
• Herois de calça curta (1930–1933)
• Seixanta minuts (1948)
• La restauració dels Jocs Florals (1960)
• Quatre coses del meu temps (1976; memoirs)
• Entre l'ahir i el demà. Opinions de cor a pensa (1991)
• Claror de posta: obra inèdita (1999)

Plays

• Una creu vora el camí (1933)
• Carbassot (1935)
• L'enlluernat (1951)

Biographies

• Verdaguer, entre la lira i el calze (1952)
• Guimerà (1958)
• Josep Maria Folch i Torres (1971)
• Pompeu Fabra (1968)
• Jaume Raventós. L'home del seny (1973)
• Caterina Albert i Paradís, Víctor Català (1978)
• Verdaguerianes (1987)
• Joan Maragall, poeta, pensador i home de fe (1988)

Grammars and dictionaries

• Gramàtica catalana (1938)
• Diccionari català-castellà i castellà-català (1969)
• Diccionari Manual de la llengua catalana (1975)
• Diccionari Trilingüe. Català-castellà-francès, castellà-català-francès, francès-català-castellà (1988)
• Diccionari Nacional de la llengua catalana (1993)

References

• Jané, Albert (2000). "Josep Miracle i Montserrat (1904-1998)," Estudis Romànics, Vol. XXII, pp. 350–53.

External links

• Works by Josep Miracle at National Library of Spain