The Earliest Theater of Eduard Vidal i Valenciano: Literature of a New Society

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that the Catalan literature of the 1860s, specifically in the theater, which was then beginning to be cultivated, reflected the profound social changes that were occurring in Catalan society, and more importantly in Barcelona, as a result of industrialization and the introduction of modern state structures. This paper examines the first dramatic works of Eduard Vidal i Valenciano, a writer belonging to the popular group of Frederic Soler and Josep Anselm Clave, but also connected with the organizers of the Floral Games of Barcelona. This examination provides insight into the social impact of the new Catalan literature, and more specifically of the new theater and Clave's work; the emergence of a new social class —the working class— with its specific problems; ideologies such as Republicanism, with its iconography and its own symbolic universe; and, more modestly, it records the concern for hygiene and for alternative medicine such as homeopathy. All of these p...