1/ Trying to answer your question about Oc and Provençal. As I see it, there was in the middle ages ONE cultural area, with no intellectual boundaries between Northern Italy, Southern France and Western Spain.
You may call it a franco-provençal area, rather than Occitanian one, the word Occitan is recent ; the franco-provençal tongue was spoken too in some regions of Italy, and is not far away from Spanish catalan. Perhaps specialists would not agree, but I think that many people could understand eachother within a triangle of cities like say Barcelona (Spain), Toulouse (France) and Florence (Italy).
2/ Some views about the " Gai Saber ", I could not identify yet a relevant WWW synthesis but here are some clues :
A possible summary in English :
http://www.geocities.com/pmcvflag/About the trobadores, trouveres, minnesaenger,etc :
http://www.toulouse-renaissance.net/lesjeux.htm http://perso.wanadoo.fr/cc-pays.ventadour/troubadours.htm http://www.dobl-oc.com/Frances/index.htmTheir conception of life and of love (" fin?amor ") :
http://poete.rebelle.free.fr/poetique/roman_courtois01.htmlThe "trobar cluz" (sorry, a bit sophisticated and moreover Italian/French) :
http://www.zen-it.com/mason/stor&soc/Dujolsit.htmLinkage between Eastern and Western traditions ? :
http://www.moncelon.com/fedeli4.htmThis one is also for fun (Lully and Bacon were of course " fidèles d?amour ") :
http://www.ovdt.org/origine.htmA very serious (single ;-)) Dutch study :
http://www.nielshelsloot.nl/tekst/1999a/306.htm3/ I have a book in French about " l?art des troubadours ", the title of which is " la fleur inverse "
(inverted flower), by Jacques Roubaud (Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1994, ISBN 2-251-49001-9) ; this is nearly double French ! I mention it because I would end with a joke and I?ll translate this " Graal fiction " from page 35 :
" When Perceval comes back to Graal castle, with many questions in mind, he opens one by one all the doors,
which were shut for centuries ; he heals the kings of Graal, the hurt kings, the sinful kings (Great success of this part of the quest I ?Jean- would comment, but not the end of it). And?at the end he opens the door of the last room; and now in the dark he sees the Sphinx, and the Sphinx tells him : " What is the answer ? " ; Perceval then says : " No ; what is the question ? ".
I find this is really Voynicheous.
Jean
jean-yves artero wrote:
> However here is perhaps an interesting site:
>
> http://www.inter-coproprietes.com/portail/formation/dictionnaires/dicosfrancais.html
Thanks for the link.
> Montaillou is otherwise a great historical book for the background of
> Middle Ages in Southern France. Curiously enough and as you may already
> know, we are very near of Levitov's (IMHO at least partly wrong)story of
> Cathars.
I do know. See my critique of Levitov by comparing
his ideas with valid historical information on the
Cathars:
http://www.geocities.com/ctesibos/voynich/levitov2.htm
> At that time yes you are right the "trobadores" were with some more
> religion-oriented monks the best bearers of the Oc/Provençal tradition (
> we here are dealing with the XIIIth and XIVth centuries! or so ). VMS
> interesting is perhaps the fact that they called their movement
> the"trobar cluz" or hidden knowledge. A long story in a nutshell, I am
> aware of this.
The trobadores, the bearers of "trobar cluz", the
hidden knowledge? I hadn't heard of this. Would you
give more details?
To you or Jacques, just what was the difference
between Occitan and Provencal literature?
Dennis
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