Occitan literature

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The Occitan literature includes literary works in Old and neuprovenzalischer language and in other varieties of the Occitan language group , known as langues d'Oc . In the past, the generic term of Provencal literature was used for this, but this is misleading as the Old Provencal language was only a variety of Occitan. In addition, many essential works of Occitan literature of the Trobador era were created outside Provence (but also outside the present-day French administrative region of Occitania). Since the 19th century, Occitan literature has been revived against long-lasting resistance from French cultural policy.

Old Provencal literature

Old Provençal is the earliest literary Romanesque language , which - as individual expressions in Latin documents show - has developed from Latin to Vulgar Latin since the 9th century in the south of France under the influence of Celtic and Visigothic . However, the Germanic influences on the Gallo-Roman language were far less pronounced here than those of Old Franconian in northern France. The oldest linguistic monuments date from the 10th century.

The Aquitano-Romanic-based, presumably Basque-influenced Gasconic (Gasconic) language , which is often also part of the Occitan language family, is possibly influenced by a Basque language substrate .

Bernart (Bernautz) de Ventadorn: Ornate capitals "Q" from the 13th century

The heyday of trobador poetry

The existence of early epic folk poetry can be assumed based on fragmentary French traditions. Then the spiritual authorities adopted the vernacular and created legends of saints. Old Provencal literature experienced its heyday in the time of the Trobadors from 1100 to 1300. It was written in an artificial language that cannot be clearly assigned to any regional dialect, but probably originated in the region around Limoges , the Limousin , and influenced the literatures of neighboring countries Language areas of closely related Catalan , Aragonese , Northern French, Italian and even German Minnesang . From the end of the 12th century, or perhaps even earlier, Provencal Trobadors came to the small northern Italian courts, where their language was easily understood. The exemplary character of Provencal poetry was so impulsive that soon Italians began to dense Provençal, including Sordello the Goito (Sordel, ca. 1200-1269), who actively seek 1220/30 in the fighting between the Guelphs and Ghibellines was involved and commented on them with political and satirical verses. Petrarch and Dante made use of the developed literary forms of Provençal through the mediation of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras , and poets from neighboring Provençal language areas also followed the models. Catalan poets even wrote their poems in Occitan until the 15th century, while they used Catalan for their prose. This points to the developed treasure trove of forms and the extent of the expressive possibilities of Provencal literature of the 12th and 13th centuries.

The Trobairitz Beatriz de Dia , Countess of Die

The poetics of Razós de trobar by Raimon Vidal de Besalú , an author of poems, was written around 1200 . This work is also a first grammar of Occitan (still influenced by Catalan). The Trobadordichtung developed a sophisticated form of art with strict syllable count and rhyme mandatory within a few decades. She was inspired by the poetry of Ovid and possibly by Arabic poetry. The trobador performed his texts with musical accompaniment, even if the meaning of the text predominated and only a few melodies have survived. Since it was about traveling poets and singers, the intelligibility of the text in different regions was important, which led to a certain standardization of the poetic artificial language.

Count Guillem IX is considered the first trobador known by name and at the same time the first Christian poet in a vernacular . of Poitou , the eleven fine to coarse mental sensual Canzos (precursor of the Italian canzones be attributed). The most important representative of trobadord poetry was the Jaufre Rudel , who was active from approx. 1125 to 1150 and of whom six poems have come down with certainty . At first it was role poetry with a fixed repertoire of forms and without the intention of expressing personal feelings. From Marcabru (Marcabrun, active around 1130/45), a representative of a hermetic, closed style (Trobar clus) , who took an active part in the Spanish Reconquista , comes from, among others. the oldest known pastourelle , which describes the encounter between a knight and a shepherd girl. Also Guillem de Cabestany , at least seven love Scan zones are attributed fought on the side of the Aragonese against the Moors. The ideal of court life (cortesia) , however, was measure (mesura) , as Folquet de Marselha , trobador and bishop of Toulouse , postulated around 1200. Raimon Jordan , Count of Saint-Antonin (active approx. 1178–1195), who became sacrilege in his love affliction, emphasizes the stoically suffering aspect of love . With Bernart de Ventadorn , author of 45 traditional love songs, strict form (e.g. the rhyme scheme[abababcccb] with alternating seven- and six-syllable verses) and subjective feeling perfectly match.

In total there should have been over 400 trobadors. Short vidas (biographies) of many of them have survived. About 20 women emerged as Trobairitz ; however, the tradition is not very precise here. Became known Beatrice de Dia , Countess of The who in their Canso Estat ai en greu cossirier / per un cavallier qu'ai agut boldly reversed ( "because of a knight who belonged to me I had great sorrow /") gender roles.

The marriage of Louis VII with Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1137 increased the influence of Occitan trobadord poetry on the courts of northern France such as B. in Troyes and thus on Anglo-Norman poetry. But with the decline of the smaller court centers and the growing importance of the bourgeoisie, the courtly court ideal of the trobador faded. Trobador poetry found its end after the extinction of Occitan culture through the Albigensian Wars (1209-1229), which were legitimized literarily as a crusade by the priest Guilhem de Tudèla ( La canzo della crozada ) . Peire Cardinal (Peire del Puoi, approx. 1180–1278), an opponent of these campaigns as well as of the clergy he reviled and the French language, reflects this process with satirical allusions. Ricaut Bonomel also quarrels around 1265/66 with the Pope, who spends the money collected for one crusade on other campaigns, and pulls out all the psychological and rhetorical registers of his art of manipulation (“neither the cross nor faith helps me against the evil Turks. .. God supports them to our detriment ”) before Giraut Riquier (approx. 1230–1292) once again led the trobadord seal to a re-bloom. In the end, trobador poetry accepts the victory of military power over the strength of faith.

More forms

Bertran de Born

A distinction is to be made between the sirventes and the minnesang, with political and moral themes, with chain rhymes ( terzinen ) being used frequently . This form, which is occasionally used for satirical purposes, was first used by Cercamon (around 1140/50) at the court of Poitiers and was brought to its highest perfection by Bertran de Born (around 1140–1215), who was involved in the Anglo-French battles of his time . The hot-blooded and combative was one of the most famous trobadors. He owes his fame not least to Dante, who assigns him a place in hell as a discord in his Divine Comedy . There he had to carry his head by his hair like a lantern, since he had incited the sons of Henry II of England to revolt against their father: “Because I separated people who were so closely connected / that is why I, poor man, carry my brain apart / from his source of life in this hull […] ”.

On the other hand, Dante praises the patriot Sordello in the sixth cant of the Purgatorio : Sordello and Virgil not only embrace each other as compatriots, Sordello Virgil and Dante are considered legitimate judges over the negligent and neglected princes. In the following, Dante joins the structure of Sordello's lamentation poem (planh) about the death of the brave knight and trobador Blacaz (Blacatz). In it, Sordello settles accounts with the princes in hierarchical order and asks them to eat a piece of Blacaz's heart in order to become as brave as this one. The eventful life of Sordello and the scene with Dante show how strongly the Trobadors intervened politically and with their poems in the daily battles of their time.

Another form from the rich treasure trove of Provencal literature is the Ensenhamen (French enseignement , Italian insegnamento , Catalan ensenyament ), the didactic instruction in various topics, such as Sordellos Ensenhamen d'onor ("instruction in honor") or Garin lo Bruns Ensenhamen de la donsela ("Instruction for Girls", around 1155). Ensenhamens are found primarily for the education of the knight, but also for table manners, the cardinal virtues and sexual customs.

The ancient Provencal epic includes stories of saints and heroic songs. The latter often deal with the conflicts between the king and vassals. This includes an anonymous novel, probably written between 1170 and 1230, with 11,000 verses about the squire Jaufré from the Arthurian epic , which is no longer limited to episodes, but to some extent offers a biographical story with surprising twists, as well as a Provencal version of the heroic epic Fierabras from the 12th century, an anonymous epic poem in Occitan-French mixed language on the fight of Count Girart of Rossilho (Roussillon) with Charles Martel (around 1150 to 1180) and a vernacular, fragmentary traditional version of the Alexander romance in Achtsilblern of AK de Pisançon (Alberich von Besançon, around 1100/1120).

Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse (right), submits in the presence of King Louis IX. (left) of the Roman Church, represented by Cardinal Romano Bonaventura (center)

With the Treaty of Paris (1229) and the submission of Raymond VII , the autonomy of Occitania ended. Many knights (the Faydits who fought against crusaders and the French king) were expropriated. As a result, court culture quickly collapsed. Due to the expansion and increasing importance of the neighboring languages ​​as literary languages, but above all due to the consolidation of the French national state, the Occitan language has been pushed back as a literary language since Francis I. Its official use was banned in 1539, under Louis XIV it was also suppressed in everyday life. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, only locally scattered remnants of literature can be registered in Toulouse, Marseille and Montpellier . The spoken language survived despite being displaced by northern French, to which the independence of the small kingdom of Navarre and the veneration of the French king Henri IV , who came from Navarre, contributed. There the idiom was at the level of a local high-level language. But after the marginalization and defamation of Provençal as patois by the absolutist cultural policy until the 18th century almost only religious and everyday texts were published in Occitan language.

New Occitan literature

In the strengthening bourgeois society of the 19th century, the rising romantic interest in the Middle Ages and in the stories of ordinary people contributed to an increasing interest in troubadour poetry and the Occitan language, with Fabre d'Olivet (1768-1825) also before forgeries in the Style of Ossian poetry did not flinch. François-Juste-Marie Raynouard brought out the first modern editions of the Trobador poetry in 1816–1821 and 1835, which also influenced German Romanticism, and left behind a monumental Occitan dictionary of the Trobador era.

Frédéric Mistral's house in Maillane

From the middle of the 19th century - building on the work of Raynouard - there was a historical-philological reconstruction of the Provencal language, whose intrinsic value was increasingly recognized, especially by Claude Fauriel , who recognized the charisma of troubadour poetry in other cultural regions and wrote a three-volume work on it. In 1854, under the direction of Frédéric Mistral (Fédéri Mistral), Théodore Aubanel and Joseph Roumanille, poets, linguists, historians, publishers and printers formed the Félibrige group, which contributed to the revitalization of the Occitan language by recreating numerous poems. Roumanille, Mistral's teacher, founded the modern narrative in Occitan. Mistral received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1904, among others. for his verse epic Mirèio ("Mireille") from 1859.

However, the authors of the Félibrige, who mostly came from a Christian-conservative culture, remained attached to the standard culture oriented towards Paris. As late as 1873, Bartsch was able to ignore New Occitan literature as insignificant in his handbook. Mistral, too, who tried to construct the national mythology of a rural Aquitaine against the onslaught of modernity, overturned the dialectal status of Occitan through his poetic work, but persisted in the willingness of the French provinces to submit to their semi-colonial realities. Aubanel's revolt against the provinciality of his native Avignon is an exception.

The movement of Félibrige influenced the end of the 19th century Gascony who wanted to protect their local idiom that is often called "barbaric" Gascon applicable, against the growing influence of Okzitanismus. The Gasconian seal was extinct after a short flowering in the 17th century. The centers of the Gasconian renewal movement in the 19th century were Bayonne and Pau as the capital of the Béarn . Here the photographer Félix Arnaudin collected folk songs, historical notes and literary fragments in Gascon language at private events and festivals.

The following generation, with Valère Bernard (1860–1936), Louisa Paulins (1888–1944) and Michel Camélat (1871–1962) successfully demystified Occistanism in poetry. At the beginning of the 20th century a not only linguistic-cultural but also political emancipation movement that was directed against Parisian centralism grew stronger. After the First World War, the language was standardized by the Oc magazine, founded around 1923, and the Societat d'Estudis Occitans (1930). Regionalism and historicizing elements were subsequently curbed, references to symbolism ( Stéphane Mallarmé ) and surrealism ( Paul Éluard ) increased. Leon Còrdas (Léon Cordes, 1913–1987) emerged as a playwright and activist in the 1930s and 1940s , while the poet Charles Camproux (1908–1994) promoted the idea of ​​Occitanism through philological studies. The poet René Nellis (1906–1982) co-founded the Institut d'Estudis Occitans (IEO), which is based in Toulouse , in 1945 .

Mans de Breish (2018)

Narrative prose has developed since the 1950s, and theater has also developed since 1968. Joan Bodon (Jean Boudou) (1920–1975) was an original narrator who left many unpublished manuscripts. Bernard Manciet (1923-2005) wrote poetry ( Gesta , 1972) and narrative prose ( La pluja , La camin de tierra , 1976) in gasconischen dialect of the country . The linguist Pierre Bec (1921–2014) from the Haute-Garonne department endeavored to standardize Gasconian; he was one of the most versatile and important poets, storytellers and editor of numerous anthologies in the 1970s to 1990s. The activist and author Ives Roqueta (Yves Rouquette) (1936–2015) from Sète promoted the production of sound carriers with occentan chansons (nòva cançon) with social and political themes and singers such as Mans de Breish (Gérard Pourhomme, * 1949), Maria Roanet (* 1936) and Claude Marti (* 1940), who wrote books in the Provencal language about his home town of Carcassonne . In 1970 he produced the first album with new Occitan cançons (Occitania) . The fact that a stylized portrait of Che Guevara was chosen as the cover of the album shows that the Post-1960s movement of Occitanism deliberately placed itself in line with anti-colonialist movements.

Despite the increased support of regional culture by the Paris government since the 1980s, Occitan literature has found it difficult to assert itself against the continuing centralism, given the number of active users of the Occitan language, which is estimated from a few 100,000 to two million.

literature

  • Karl Bartsch : Outline for the history of Provencal literature. KL Friedrichs publishing house, Elberfeld 1873.
  • Erich Köhler , Fritz Peter Kirsch: The Occitan literature. In: Kindlers new literature lexicon, Vol. 19, Munich 1996, pp. 1012-1019
  • Provencal literature . In: Der Literatur Brockhaus , Vol. 3, Og-Z, Mannheim 1988, pp. 135 f.

anthology

  • Dietmar Rieger (ed. And transl.): Medieval poetry of France. Volume I. Songs of the Trobadors. Provencal / German. Reclam, Stuttgart 1980.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erich Köhler, Fritz Peter Kirsch, p. 1012.
  2. ↑ Margarita Egan (ed. And transl.): The Vidas of the Troubadours. Garland, New York 1984.
  3. ↑ Klaus Engelhardt, Volker Roloff: Daten der Französischen Literatur. dtv, Munich 1979, vol. 1, p. 18 f.
  4. ↑ Jay Puckett: "Reconmenciez novele estoire": The Troubadours and the Rhetoric of the Later Crusades. In: MLN , French. Edition, 116 (2001) 4, pp. 844-889, Johns Hopkins University Press.
  5. ↑ Dante: The Divine Comedy , Inferno, Twenty-eighth Song, Translated by Karl Vossler, Frankfurt, Vienna, Zurich 1978, p. 139.
  6. ↑ Dante: The Divine Comedy , Purgatorio, Sixth Song, Translated by Karl Vossler, Frankfurt, Vienna, Zurich 1978, p. 196 ff.
  7. ↑ Don A. Monson: Les 'ensenhamens' occitans. Essai de définition et délimitation du genre. Paris 1981.
  8. ↑ English translation by Ross G. Arthur: Jaufre: An Occitan Arthurian Romance. Routledge, 2014; see in particular p. XVII.
  9. ↑ Köhler, Kirsch 1996, p. 1015.
  10. ↑ Köhler, Kirsch 1996, p. 1017.
  11. ↑ Claude Fauriel: Histoire de la poésie provençale . 3 volumes. Jules Labitte, Paris 1846. Digital copies: Volume I ; II ; III
  12. ↑ Melanie Stralla: The Provencal Renaissance in Germany: Translation and Edition by Frédéric Mistrals Mirèio around 1900. Diss., Uni Wuppertal 2019, Online: [1] (PDF).
  13. ↑ Köhler, Kirsch 1996, p. 1017.
  14. ↑ Pierre Bec: Le siècle d'or de la poésie gasconne (1550-1650). Les Belles Lettres, Paris 1997.
  15. ↑ FK: Bernard Manciet. In: Kindlers new literature lexicon, vol. 11, Munich 1996, p. 6 f.
  16. ↑ Eric Drott: The nòva cançon occitana and the internal colonianism thesis. In: French Politics, Culture & Society , 20 (2001) 1, pp. 1-23.