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Au XIXe siècle, la langue catalane est entrée depuis longtemps dans un mouvement de repli. Des deux côtés de la frontière franco-espagnole, les élites culturelles l’abandonnent au profit des langues officielles. Si elle demeure langue du quotidien pour la grande majorité de la population, privées de normes, ses formes s’altèrent au contact des langues du pouvoir. En Roussillon, comme en Catalogne, des intellectuels s’inquiètent du devenir d’un idiome dont ils craignent, à terme, la disparition. À leurs yeux, sa survie passe par un redressement de son image auprès des élites nationales et de ses propres locuteurs. Ils vont donc tâcher de vanter son lustre passé, et ses capacités littéraires toujours vivantes, pour le constituer en patrimoine qu’il est de la responsabilité des Roussillonnais de conserver.

During the XIXth century, the Catalan language had been in decline for three centuries. On both sides of the French and Spanish borders, the cultural elites preferred to use the official languages. And, even though Catalan was still an everyday language for the majority of people, there was no grammar to command its use, and it was increasingly interspersed with French or Castillan words. In Roussillon, just like in Catalonia, some intellectuals worried for the future of this language, as they feared it was going to disappear. Their idea was that it would survive only if national elites and the Catalonian people itself changed their minds about it. For that, they would try to recall its prestigious past, to show its ongoing capacities for literary creation, to make Catalan appear as a treasure the Catalan people of France had a duty to protect.