La Langue partagée: écrits et paroles d’oc 1700–1789 ed. by Jean-François Courouau (review)

In the beginning, there was Anatole and Lafont and their magisterial Nouvelle histoire de la littérature occitane. Then came a second attempt for a slightly different audience, led by Robert Lafont and Philippe Gardy, the Histoire et anthologie de la littérature occitane (four volumes projected; only two published). For years, there have been discussions of updating “Anatole and Lafont.” Courourau’s impressive La Langue partagée shares with these two predecessors the merit of giving readers all they could ask for and more, albeit for a single century in Occitan literary history. This remarkable contribution to our knowledge of Occitan literature of the eighteenth century provides a new foundation for all subsequent work in this period.

Courouau brings together several generations of scholars to consider every aspect of Occitan literature composed between the years of the title, 1700 to 1789. The editor purposefully omits literature directly relating to the French Revolution, in part because this later period received a good deal of press in the years around the 1989 Bicentenary and also because that literature leads directly into the nineteenth century, another period entirely.

Courouau explains in his “Introduction” (9–46) his view of eighteenth-century Occitan society, a world that was generally diglossic: “Occitan et français cohabitent” (22). The purpose of this volume, he says explicitly, is to consider every written manifestation of Occitan in the period, so as to counter earlier efforts to ignore or suppress this literature (37). As a result of this massive undertaking, readers will be in a position to consider the global linguistic and literary landscape of eighteenth-century Occitania (38).

The first long chapter, “Un grand siècle de poésie” (47–144), again by Courouau, considers all works of the period in verse—it is a long chapter. He discusses, in turn, religious and moral works, reprints, popular poetry, poetry for special occasions, translations of earlier works, comedic works, social poetry and epistles, pastoral works, and more. Courouau’s careful analysis allows him to note that Toulouse is the publishing center for reprints of sixteenth-century authors such as Guilhem Ader, Jean-Géraud Dastros, and Pierre Godolin (60). He observes that Occitan tends to be used to evoke rurality but that the language is also used as a way to unify an audience (80). Translations served as a scholastic exercise, as an opportunity to offer a new interpretation of a classical work. In addition to expected translations, e.g., of the Aeneid, we also see Occitan translations, notably of La Fontaine, in numbers sufficient to suggest a community of authors and readers (94–97). Burlesques and comedic texts continue a literary trend seen in the seventeenth century (99); the number of texts is impressive, and one must applaud Courouau for uncovering as much material as he did. Courouau’s preliminary conclusions are several: verse works were composed by individuals of every social group, from literate peasants to members of the upper classes (139); oral transmission remained active in the period (140); cities, more than the countryside, were the locus for these works (141); authors were aware of the richness of their language and used its wealth to good purpose (141).

Philippe Gardy’s “Un théâtre traversé par deux langues” (145–195) is a useful synthesis of everything one needs to know about Occitan theatre of the period. Though Gardy is very dependent on the work of Jean Eygun, his own examination of the material brings to our attention the 60–70 texts of the period. Gardy first sorts the texts, those that are datable and those that are not—it is noteworthy that some twenty-five of these have yet to be published in a critical edition (see 151–157). Gardy thinks the plays point to a sociability tied to the local language (161); code switching is frequently used for...