El triomf de la fonètica

Martí de Riquer

Martí de Riquer’s legacy encompasses over 400 publications on Catalan and world literature. His Història de la literatura catalana or his troubadour anthology are works of reference that make this scholar one of the major humanists of our culture. Just before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Martí de Riquer wrote two comedies, Spinoza i els gentils and El triomf de la fonètica, which in another context would have become important references of drama history. In these pieces, the playwright resumes the Catalan tradition of short humorous plays known as sainets and proposes a revision of the bourgeois drama codes that, to a certain extent, anticipates the rupturist poetics of writers such as Ionesco, who would not premiere The Bald Soprano until 1950. In El triomf de la fonètica, the habitual attempt to arrange a marriage will become a comic delirium which will mix Eskimos, goats, philologists and, even, some phonological problems.