Occitan Literature - Introduction

Introduction

Occitan literature started in the 11th and 12th centuries in several centres. It gradually spread out thence, 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. At the time of its highest development (12th century) the art of composing in the vulgar tongue did not exist, or was only beginning to exist, to the south of the Alps and the Pyrenees. In the north, in the country of French speech, vernacular poetry was in full bloom; but between the districts in which it had developed, Champagne, Île-de-France, Picardy and Normandy and the region in which Occitan literature had sprung up, there seems to have been an intermediate zone formed by Burgundy, Bourbonnais, Berry, Touraine and Anjou which, far on in the Middle Ages, appears to have remained almost barren of vernacular literature.

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 genuine 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.