Galician literature in 19(th) century grammars

This article focuses on the analysis of discursive references to literature, literary quotations and text collections in the grammars by Francisco Miras (1864), Juan Cuveiro Pinol (1868), Jose Antonio Saco Arce (1868) and Marcial Valladares (1892, published in 1970). By ana-lysing literary quotations we can conclude that contemporary literary production - mainly poetry - is not used to support grammatical premises, but is the object of censorship or critical comments, whereas popular poetry, as a representative instance of oral speech, is treated as authoritative. Collections of texts presented separately from grammatical descriptions serve to legitimize both linguistic and identity claims, and contribute to the process of literary canonization.