Antoni Maria Alcover i Sureda
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Father Antoni Maria Alcover y Sureda (Santa Cirga, Manacor, 1862 - Palma, 1932) was a modernist Majorcan writer, who wrote on a wide range of subjects including the Church, folklore and linguistics. He is chiefly associated with efforts to revive interest in the Catalan language and its dialects. Among his works was a Catalan-Valencian-Balearic dictionary.
[edit] Biography
Alcover was born in Santa Cirga, a small territory between Manacor y Porto Cristo, the son of laborers. After studying Latin and classics he moved at the age of 15 to Palma de Mallorca, where he continued his studies in seminary. He became quickly known as a stubborn polemicist.
Although his first literary efforts were in Spanish, he turned to the Catalan language after 1879. From this date, he undertook to collect the fables and folklore of Majorca, which he began to publish in 1880 in various journals under the pseudonym Jordi d'es Racó. In 1886 he was ordained and became the parish priest for Manacor. In 1888 he became a professor of ecclesiastical history at the seminary in Palma.
In 1906, by his initiative and under his presidency, the first Congrés Internacional de la Llengua Catalana (International Congress of the Catalan Language) was held. He was named president of the philological branch of the Institute for Catalan Studies, a position which quickly ended after a furious dispute with other members of the Institute.
His Magnum Opus was the Català-Valencià-Balear Dictionary, which he did not live to see completed. It was finished by his collaborator Francesc de Borja i Moll.
Among other responsibilities, he was the correspondent of the Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona in Barcelona.
[edit] Work
His literary work focused on linguistic research, history, popular customs and folklore collections, various biographies, travel narratives and a novel.
