Re: VMs: Occitan months...?

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

At 17:14 18/07/2004 -0400, Bruce Grant wrote:
> According to the introduction of that book, the term "Occitan" is a 19th 
> century coinage - in the 17th century the language was called "Provencal" 
> in English, while in medieval times it was referred to by its speakers as 
> "proensal", "lemozin" or "romans" at different times. The term "lengua 
> d'oc" may or may not refer to this language.

As is nearly always the case, the Wikipedia entry for "Occitan" covers most 
of the important ground here: suffice to say that I don't think I'm in any 
way unusual in using the term "Occitan" to cover the whole family of 
dialects/languages (including Provencal, etc).
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occitan

However, what particularly interests me is that Occitan did not (pre-20th 
century) appear to have any academic agenda/ideology supporting its 
stylisation or mode of expression - and so remained fluid and oral. FWIW, I 
see it more as a Lingua Franca-style deposit of a French cultural microcosm 
talking to itself across its internal geographic boundaries - and perhaps 
this kind of viewpoint may give us the leverage needed to help place our 
zodiac writer in both time and place. :-o

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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