L'escriptor i la seva imatge: projecció social de la literatura catalana contemporània

Our research project concerns the construction and the social representation of the writer in contemporany Catalan literature. The main focus is upon analysis of the process of creation of the image through which the writer gives shape and substance to his/her social presence and obtains specific areas of influence. This image combines two concepts which are ultimately inseparable, mutually dependent and interactive, that of author and that of intellectual. We study the latter category as one created with the objective of obtaining recognition for thewriter's social space and of justifying the collective relevance of his/her literature. We work outwards from the specific case of Catalan literature, in which problems of the social projection both of the writer and of the literary product are paticularly intense and often explicit. Our aim is thus to contribute to the history of the figure of the intellectual (recent reserch on which has had a markedly sociological bias) with due consideration of the central place occupied in this history by literary creation and the protagonism of the creative writer