Late Twentieth and Twenty-first Century
Despite two hundred years of suppression by successive French centralist governments and the official prohibition of the language at school, in the administration and in the media, Occitan and Occitania have never ceased to inspire poets and authors. To the day, Article II of the French Constitution denies the existence and legitimacy of culturally rich and elaborate idioms such as Catalan, Breton, Basque and Occitan, among others. And though the use of the latter has been greatly affected by what is known as la Vergonha — which is the physical, legal, artistic and moral repression of the tongue in all areas of society aiming at making children feel ashamed of their parents' language to the benefit of French, — every region of the country of Òc gave birth to literary geniuses: Joan Bodon in Guyenne, Marcela Delpastre in Limousin, Robèrt Lafont in Provence, Bernat Manciet in Gascony and Max Roqueta in Languedoc.
All genres of modern international literature are present in Occitan, especially since the second half of the 20th century, although some avant-garde Occitan literature already existed from the late 19th century.
Read more about this topic: Occitan Literature
Famous quotes containing the words late, twentieth and/or century:
“Books, gentlemen, are a species of men, and introduced to them you circulate in the “very best society” that this world can furnish, without the intolerable infliction of “dressing” to go into it. In your shabbiest coat and cosiest slippers you may socially chat even with the fastidious Earl of Chesterfield, and lounging under a tree enjoy the divinest intimacy with my late lord of Verulam.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Film is more than the twentieth-century art. It’s another part of the twentieth-century mind. It’s the world seen from inside. We’ve come to a certain point in the history of film. If a thing can be filmed, the film is implied in the thing itself. This is where we are. The twentieth century is on film.... You have to ask yourself if there’s anything about us more important than the fact that we’re constantly on film, constantly watching ourselves.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“But they who give straight judgements to strangers and to those of the land and do not transgress what is just, for them the city flourishes and its people prosper.”
—Hesiod (c. 8th century B.C.)