The historical relationship between the Catalan and Occitan languages had a definitive impact on the linguistic identity of the powerful Crown of Aragon and the emergent Spanish Empire. Drawing upon a wealth of historical documents, linguistic treatises and literary texts, this book offers fresh insights into the political and cultural forces that shaped national identities in the Iberian Peninsula and, consequently, neighboring areas of the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. The innovative textual approach taken in these pages exposes the multifaceted ways in which the boundaries between the region's most prestigious languages were contested, and demonstrates how linguistic identities were linked to ongoing struggles for political power. As the analysis reveals, the ideological construction of Occitan would play a crucial role in the construction of a unified Catalan, and Catalan would, in turn, give rise to a fervent debate around 'Spanish' language that has endured through the present day. This book will appeal to students and scholars of historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, Hispanic linguistics, Catalan language and linguistics, anthropological linguistics, Early Modern literature and culture, and the history of the Mediterranean.

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Part I: The political use of the Occitan language by the Catalan-Aragonese monarchy; Chapter 2: The Rise of Catalan as a Royal Language: Bernat Desclot's account of the Battle of Castellammare in response to Bernat d'Auriac's sirventés; Chapter 3: The politics of the linguistic discontinuity of Occitan versus the continuity of Catalan: the Sermó by Ramon Muntaner.- Chapter 4: Catalan and Occitan versus Aragonese: the poetic ceremony following the Coronation of Alfonso the Benign in Muntaner's Crònica.- Part II: The interpretation of the Catalan-Occitan relationship in the construction of the Spanish Empire.- Chapter 5: The historical (dis)continuity of the Catalan language and the linguistic creation of the Spanish Empire: Ausiàs March in the Early Modern Period.- Chapter 6: A unitary Catalan-Occitan language in the Early Modern Period: the exaltation of Apitxat Valencian.- Chapter 7: Conclusion.