Occitan Literature (Post-Medieval). In the age of printing, literature in the six main dialects of the langue d'oc (Gascon, Languedocien, Provençal, Limousin, Auvergnat, and Provençal Alpin) is dominated by a few great authors, mainly poets. Yet hundreds of minor writers also made distinctive contributions. The reluctance or inability of many to publish in their lifetime complicates the pattern of recognition and influence.
In the 16th c., political, economic and social factors ensured that French continued to oust Occitan as an administrative and literary language [see History of the French language]. Despite evidence of continuing Occitan drama, apart from one journal, some arithmetical and religious works, and students' satires (Cansons dau carrateyron, composed in Aix, c. 1530), little of significance was published until Pey de Garros's fine Gascon translations of the Psalms (1565) and his heroic and bucolic Poesias gasconas (1567), which standardized Gascon spelling. There followed a Provençal renaissance in Aix and Marseille, heralded by the fanciful Vies des plus célèbres et anciens poètes provençaux (1575) of Jean de Nostredame (brother of Michel de Nostredame). This renaissance included poets less sober, more erotic and carnivalesque than Garros, such as Robèrt Ruffi, Miqueu Tronc, Pèire Paul and, above all, Loïs Bellaud de la Belaudiera (1543-88). Languedoc as yet produced little in Occitan save four volumes of crude though pedantic verse (1579-83) by the Protestant ex-soldier Auger Gaillard.
Between 1600 and 1660 gallicization continued despite some hostility to the crown after 1610 and intermittent opposition at the Jeux Floraux in Toulouse. By virtue of its location, wealth, and compliance with royal authority, this city assumed a central role in the spreading Occitan renaissance. It attracted the Gascon poets Bertran Larade (b. 1581), a lawyer who won no prizes for his lively baroque love poetry, and Guilhem Ader (?1567-1638), a doctor who wrote verse homilies and a patriotic encomium of Henri IV, Lou Gentilome gascoun (1610). Hailed as the foremost poet of Toulouse was Pèire Godolin (1580-1649), author of Ramelet moundi (1617), comprising festival poems and 16 burlesque prose prologues to ballets. In Montpellier his equivalent was Isaac Despuech (d. 1642), in Aix Glaudi Brueys (fl. 1628). In Agen Francés de Corteta (1586-1667) wrote a farce and two pastoral comedies, all unpublished and apparently unstaged in his lifetime. Aix and Béziers were important centres of theatrical activity.
The period 1660-1789, marked by Bourbon rule, harsh taxation, famine, and Camisard revolt, produced a number of minor Occitan writers. A Toulousain school followed Godolin until 1694; in Provence, theatre flourished, as did pastoral in Languedoc and Marseille. Joan de Cabanes (Aix, 1654-1717) wrote verse narratives, comedies, satires, and prose tales, still largely unpublished. Cibran Despourrins (Accous, 1698-1759) composed attractive songs in the Béarnais dialect, and priests throughout Occitania produced religious verse, especially carols. Two clerical authors stand out: in Languedoc, the impoverished anti-Voltairean humanist Joan-Batista Fabre (1727-83), whose voluminous writings include traditional yet original comedies, burlesques, and the classic of satirical prose Istouera de Jan-l'an-pres, all published posthumously; and in Rouergue Glaudi Peiròt (1709-95), read as far afield as Paris and Versailles, a lesser author of fashionably rural Rousseauesque descriptions fusing Virgilian echoes with agricultural practicality.
Despite Revolutionary hopes, the period 1789-1914 made Occitania subservient to the French nation. Yet the language continued to be widely spoken, and provincial intellectual life flourished, producing local learned societies (e.g. Béziers, Nîmes) and political clubs. After 1830, new patois writers emerged: revolutionary or conservative working-class authors who broke with the oral tradition, sympathizing intellectuals, and even resettled aristocrats. Against all odds, and unorganized, a second literary renaissance developed, notably in the Mediterranean coastal towns between Béziers and Marseille, but also in Bordeaux, Nice, the Toulouse region, and Béarn. Here the liberal intellectual Xavier Navarrot (1799-1862), bourgeois of Oloron and friend of Béranger, wrote convivial and moving political songs (Estreas bearnesas, 1835). In the moral central areas, La Gazette du Bas-Languedoc printed Roumanille's first critical essays , while bourgeois authors like the Nîmes judge Louis Aubanel, the Avignon academic Hyacinthe Morel and the Cévenol marquis de la Fare-Alais published Occitan works alongside working-class poets (e.g. the potter G.-A. Peiròtas of Clermont-l'Hérault) and realists such as the bitterly reactionary Victor Gelu (1806-85) of Marseille.
Meanwhile some writers worked in isolation. They included priests in Auvergne, the Gévaudan, and Limoges. ‘Jasmin’ (Jacques Boé, 1798-1864), the barber poet of Agen and author of Las Papillotos (1835), positively shunned disciples, even though his sentimental romances and, after 1830, political lyrics made him the most popular Occitan poet of his day, feted in Paris and honoured by the Pope for contributions to charity. In his preoccupation with enriching the language, his unqualified success since ‘discovery’ by Nodier in 1832, and his very numerous poetry performances, he prefigures Mistral.
Despite the increasingly rapid erosion of Occitan after 1852, an organized renaissance developed in Avignon from the meeting of Mistral and Joseph Roumanille (1818-91), the humorously moralizing writer of Li Conte provençau (1883), a sharp Catholic polemicist after 1848 and 1871, and father of the Félibrige. Thanks to Mistral, this renaissance broadened after 1870 from a heterogeneous Avignon school (including Aubanel, Anselme Mathieu, and soon Alphonse Tavan, William Bonaparte-Wyse, Louis Roumieux, and Félix Gras) into a pan-Occitan organization with regional heads (majoraux), embracing writers as diverse as Paul Arène, Valèri Bernard, Batisto Bonnet, Auguste Fourès, Albert Arnavielle, Arsène Vermenouze, Joseph Roux, Jean-Baptiste Chèze, Jean-François Bladé, Michel Camelat, and Philadelphe de Gerde.
Breadth inevitably brought conflict among local chauvinists, especially when spelling reforms were attempted. Enduring linguistic anarchy resulted, with friction between, on the one side, the Provençal modernists and continuers of the Félibrige, and on the other the members of the Escòla Occitana, who were based mainly in Upper Languedoc and admired the earlier local reformist poets Antonin Perbosc (1861-1944) and Prosper Estieu (1860-1939). Yet amid an increasing awareness of the minority status of Occitan after World War I, pan-Occitan federalism was revitalized by contact with Catalan nationalism in the 1920s and 1930s. It found expression in periodicals such as Oc (founded in Toulouse in 1923 by the Gascon Ismaël Girard) and Occitània (founded by the Marseilleborn Charles Camproux), and in 1931 inspired the creation of the Societat d'Estudis Occitans.
However, the schismatic tendency reappeared during World War II when the Félibrige, now reactionary and responding to the Vichy government and Fascist sympathizers (notably Maurras), was opposed by a variety of liberal and left-wing thinkers and writers, some of them Parisians seeking refuge in the ‘free’ zone and espousing the Occitan cause, others (e.g. Joë Bousquet) being southerners by birth [see Occupation and Resistance]. It was a coalition of French and Occitan writers (including Jean Cassou, Tristan Tzara, Ismaël Girard, Max Rouquette, René Nelli, and Pierre Rouquette) that secretly planned and, soon after the Liberation of France, launched the Institut d'Estudis Occitans, a major organization for the promotion of Occitan culture and research with branches throughout Occitania and in Paris.
Post-war writing has been dominated by IEO members, some of whom have transcended interdialectal rivalry and achieved international recognition (e.g. poets Max Rouquette, René Nelli, and Yves Rouquette, novelists Jean Boudou and Bernard Manciet, and polymath Robert Lafont). Notable among independents is the poet Max-Philippe Delavouët. Constant themes are alienation and self-awareness, cultural and linguistic enracinement and déracinement. Since May 1968, writers (including newcomers like Roland Pécout and Jean-Marie Pieyre) have endeavoured to break with tradition, truisms, and conformity, blending styles in a baroque mixture that reflects a shattered cultural identity. On a more popular level, traditional themes and contemporary political issues have been treated by Occitan singers, who have found sponsorship for their concerts and recordings (e.g. in Languedoc Claude Marti, Patric and Maria Roanet; in Limousin Jan dau Melhau; in Gascony Nadau; in Provence Mont-Jòia). The future of Occitan literary activity depends largely on regional, central, and European Community funding and policy on minority language rights.
[Peter Davies]
Bibliography
- R. Lafont and C. Anatole, Nouvelle histoire de la littérature occitane (1970- )
- P. Gardy and F. Pic (ed.), Vingt ans de littérature d'expression occitane, 1968-1988 (1990)
