Académie des Jeux floraux

The Consistori del Gay Saber (Occitan: [kunsisˈtɔɾi ðel ˈɣaj saˈβe]; "Consistory of the Gay Science") was a poetic academy founded at Toulouse in 1323 to revive and perpetuate the lyric poetry of the troubadours.

Also known as the Acadèmia dels Jòcs Florals ("Academy of the Floral Games"), it is the most ancient literary institution of the western world. It was founded in 1323 in Toulouse and later restored by Clémence Isaure as the Consistori del Gay Saber with the goal of encouraging Occitan poetry. The best verses were given prizes at the floral games in the form of different flowers, made of gold or silver, such as violets, rose hips, calendula officinalis, amaranths or lilium. The Consistori eventually became gallicised. It was renewed by Louis XIV in 1694 and still exists today. The Académie des Jeux Floraux has had such prestigious members as Ronsard, Marmontel, Chateaubriand, Voltaire, Alfred de Vigny, Victor Hugo and Frédéric Mistral.

The Consistori was founded by seven literary men of the bourgeoisie, who composed a manifesto, in Old Occitan verse, pledging to award prizes to poetry in the troubadouresque style and emulating the language of classical period of the troubadours (roughly 1160–1220). The academy was originally called the Consistori dels Sept Trobadors ("Consistory of the Seven Troubadours") or Sobregaya Companhia dels Set (VII) Trobadors de Tolosa ("Overjoyed Company of the seven troubadours of Toulouse"). In its efforts to promote an extinct literary koiné over the evolving dialects of the fourteenth century, the Consistori went a long way to preserving the troubadours' memory for posterity as well as bequeathing to later scholarship an encyclopaedic terminology for the analysis and historiography of Occitan lyric poetry. Chaytor believed that the Consistori "arose out of informal meetings of poets held in earlier years".

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