Provençal literature

Occitan literature (referred to in older texts as Provençal literature) is a body of texts written in Occitan, mostly in the south of France. It was the first literature in a Romance language and inspired the rise of vernacular literature throughout medieval Europe. Occitan literature's Golden Age was in the 12th century, when a rich and complex body of lyrical poetry was produced by troubadours writing in Old Occitan; however, it does survive to these days. Although Catalan is considered by some a variety of Occitan, this article will not deal with Catalan literature, which started diverging from its Southern French counterpart in the late 13th century.

Occitan literature started in the 11th century in several centres. It gradually spread from there, first over the greater portion (though not the whole) of southern France, and then into Catalonia, Galicia, Castile, Portugal and into what is now the north of Italy.

In its rise Occitan literature stands completely by itself, and in its development it long continued to be highly original. It presents at several points analogies with French literature; but these analogies are due principally to certain primary elements common to both and only in a slight degree to mutual reaction.

Occitan poetry first appeared in the 11th century. The oldest surviving text is the Provençal burden (Fr. "refrain") attached to a 10th-century Latin poem. The text has not yet been satisfactorily interpreted. The quality of the earliest remaining works suggest earlier work was lost.

The earliest Occitan poem is a 10th-century, seventeen-line charm Tomida femina probably for dispersing the pain of childbirth. Much longer is an 11th-century fragment of two hundred and fifty-seven decasyllabic verses preserved in an Orléans manuscript, first printed by Raynouard. It is believed to have come from Limousin or Marche in the north of the Occitan region. The unknown author takes Boethius's treatise De consolatione philosophiae as the groundwork of his composition. The poem is a didactic piece composed by a clerk. The Cançó de Santa Fe dates from 1054–76, but probably represents a Catalan dialect that evolved into a distinct language from Occitan. From the same century there is Las, qu'i non sun sparvir, astur, a secular love poem.

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