L’invention de la littérature baroque occitane : Félix-Marcel Castan et Robert Lafont
Abstract
Our purpose here aims at describing the context of the first appearance of the syntagm “Occitan baroque” and to produce an analysis of the operations permitted by it, through the examination of intellectual endeavors related to the baroque of two of its main proponents Félix Castan-Marcel and Robert Lafont, major and antagonist figures of occitanism in the immediate post war. So we examine the main issues of this “invention” of the “Occitan baroque” in order: I– to give a literary dignity to a set of writings previously relegated to the status of “patois literature” II– to establish an unified and coherent body of writings for a long period from the second half of the sixteenth century until the French Revolution. III– to define the cultural, stylistic and ideological specificity and identity, and therefore the autonomy of the Occitan corpus from the French literature and the other European literatures (in particular Italian and Spanish) of early modern period. We emphasize the fundamental unity of the Castan and Lafont undertakings but also the differences in the analysis and the intellectual and ideological issues of their respective projects.
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