Literature
Although a written literary tradition exists, Gallo is more noted for extemporised story-telling and theatrical presentations. Given Brittany's rich musical heritage, contemporary performers produce a range of music sung in Gallo (see Music of Brittany).
The roots of written Gallo literature are traced back to Le Livre des Manières written in 1178 by Etienne de Fougères, a poetical text of 336 quatrains and the earliest known Romance text from Brittany, and to Le Roman d'Aquin, an anonymous 12th century chanson de geste transcribed in the 15th century but which nevertheless retains features typical of the mediaeval Romance of Brittany. In the 19th century oral literature was collected by researchers and folklorists such as Paul Sébillot, Adolphe Orain, Amand Dagnet and Georges Dottin. Amand Dagnet (1857-1933) also wrote a number of original works in Gallo, including a play La fille de la Brunelas (1901).
It was in the 1960s that a concerted effort to stimulate Gallo literature started. In 1979 Alan J. Raude published a proposed standardised orthography for Gallo.
Read more about this topic: Gallo Language
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“No state can build
A literature that shall at once be sound
And sad on a foundation of well-being.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Despite your best efforts, you could not invent a better police force for literature than criticism and the author’s own conscience.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Life’s so ordinary that literature has to deal with the exceptional. Exceptional talent, power, social position, wealth.... Drama begins where there’s freedom of choice. And freedom of choice begins when social or psychological conditions are exceptional. That’s why the inhabitants of imaginative literature have always been recruited from the pages of Who’s Who.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)