Abstract

This essay vindicates the interest of the study of 17th and 18th century Valencian, in opposition to traditional stereotypes that derogatively classify it as presumably a period of literary and socio-linguistic decline. Summing up previous works and with a large new body of evidence, the author describes the most significant morpho-syntactical characteristics of the Valencian varieties of this period, in contrast to precepts of the contemporary norm and to the present state of Valencian.