Critical writing in Catalan is largely concerned with linguistic and literary identity, from Josep Ballot’s Gramàtica i apologia de la llengua catalana (1815) to Lo gaiter del Llobregat (1841) by Joaquim Rubió i Ors, the preface of which amounts to a proclamation of literary independence. Literary criticism was faced, however, with a lack of institutional continuity and of professionalism, meaning that Catalan literature and cultural reflection were expressed largely through the medium of verse, or else formed part of the Spanish literary system.

Romanticism was introduced by the journal El Europeo (1823-24), with collaborators such as Bonaventura Carles Aribau and Ramon López Soler; meanwhile the didactic handbooks maintained neoclassicist principles and remained present in the school system (witness Elementos de literatura, 1856, by Josep Coll i Vehí). Romantic literary debates were sparked by the likes of Joseph Andrew de Covert-Spring and Pau Piferrer, and eclectics such as Joaquim Roca i Cornet and Josep Maria Quadrado. In the Diario de Barcelona, the critics were Joan Mañé i Flaquer and, after 1866, Francesc Miquel i Badia.

Studies on Catalan literature focused on medieval literature. In the first half of the century, the leading figures were Francesc Jaubert de Paçà, Josep Tastú and Josep Camboliu, all from Roselló. Memorias para ayudar a formar un diccionario crítico de escritores catalanes (1836) by Jordi Torres Amat was an enlightened inventory along the same lines as other works by Joaquim Maria Bover, Antoni Elias de Molins and Josep Ribelles Comín. Magí Pers i Ramona published Historia de la lengua y de la literatura catalana desde su origen hasta nuestros días (1857).

The principal scholar of Catalan and Provençal literature was Manuel Milà i Fontanals, literary critic, leader of the Catalan school and poet. Of a neoclassical background, he was the first exponent of a liberal, sceptical Romanticism and defended the untrammelled freedom of creativity. However, at the end of the 1830s, an ideological crisis prompted him to shift towards political moderantisme and historicist Romanticism. His work was characterized by documentary rigour and a moralizing and ideological intent. He introduced the new methods of Romance studies and placed particular importance on the need for precision and objectivity. His Observaciones sobre la poesia popular (1853), subsequently extended in Romancerillo catalán (1882), and his De los trovadores en España (1861) facilitated a vogue for medievalism and interest in popular poetry. From the chair he held at the University of Barcelona, his teaching influence was extensive: he held sway over such figures as Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, the leading light of Spanish literary historiography, and Antoni Rubió i Lluch, who took the chair of Catalan literature at the Estudis Universitaris Catalans in 1904.

The last third of the century was dominated by Josep Yxart, who moved from his early Romanticism towards positivism and Realist-Naturalist literature, as a result of his reading of Hippolyte Taine and contemporary European novelists. His criticism and that of his friend Joan Sardà, who followed a similar path, exerted an important influence on the emerging generation, e.g. the novelist Narcís Oller.

Jaume Massó i Torrents’s journal L’Avenç, with collaborators such as Alexandre Cortada and Jaume Brossa, became another important force for a Catalan cultural modernization, taking inspiration from European models such as Ibsen, Maeterlinck and Nietzsche. Other journals of this fin-de-siècle Modernisme were Catalònia and, after 1900, Joventut, where Emili Tintorer, Frederic Pujulà, Jeroni Zanné and Ramon Miquel i Planas engaged in literary criticism with Ibsenite and Wagnerite fervour. Literary history, meanwhile, combined factual positivism with the idealism of the day in Miquel dels Sants Oliver’s Literatura en Mallorca (1903). In El Poble Català, the last important redoubt of Modernisme, writers such as Josep Pous i Pagès and Antoni Rovira i Virgili contributed as literary critics. However, more important than both of them was Manuel de Montoliu, who started a long career as a critic and literary director, first in the tradition of left-wing Modernisme, the result of which was the book Estudis de literatura catalana, and subsequently, after a visit to Halle and under the influence of Karl Vossler, in the tradition of conservative intellectualism advocating Catholic ideas. An influential later adept of Vossler’s ideas was Carles Riba.

At the turn of the century, Eugeni d’Ors, abandoning his earlier Modernisme, and influenced by critics such as Francesco De Sanctis, advocated a new school of cultural thought known as Noucentisme. Among its adherents were Josep Carner, Alexandre Plana (Antologia de poetes catalans moderns, 1914), Joaquim Folguera (Les noves valors de la poesia catalana, 1919), Josep Maria Capdevila, Tomàs Garcés and Marià Manent. While schools like Modernisme and Noucentisme moved away from the nostalgic (historicist and rustic-idyllic) Romanticism of the mid-19th-century Renaixença, they continued its agenda to develop an autonomous Catalan culture attuned to non-Spanish Europe.