Marcabrun shows in his surviving poems that the age in which he lived was as appreciative of biting satire as the France of to-day. Pons de Capdoil, Raimbaut de Vacqueiras and Peirol, all Crusaders, were writers of excellent love songs which helped to swell the fame of the Pro vencal troubadours and their art. After the first century of brilliant success the quality of Provençal literature began to depreciate. The earnestness and enthusiasm of the earlier poets had been replaced by the .artificiality and more or less stereotypes of succeeding generations who continued to follow the fashion set by the predecessors. The opening of the Albigensian Crusade in 1209 was the beginning of a move ment which finally destroyed the power of the independent principalities of southern France, broke up the Provencal society and caused to disappear the centres in which the troubadours found welcome and support, and finally de stroyed the Provencal tongue as an official speech and the vehicle of poetical expression. The French power, language and culture over ran the Provencal countries and the troubadours and other Provencal poets disappeared almost suddenly about 1350.
Middle Period.-- After the overthrow of the southern French principalities and the dia. appearance of the court troubadours Provencal literature, as the medium of expression of the aristocracy disappeared; but it did not alto gether die out. As the courtly bonds which had bound it together into one homogeneous whole, that made the troubadour at home in southern France, eastern and southeastern Spain and northern Italy, were cut, and the patronage of the nobles and princes was withdrawn, the heritage of Provencal literature fell to the masses, who wrote more or less in the language of the country. As each district made use of ids own dialect, the old uniformity disappeared; and thus provencal literature lost its former prestige and all hut very local interest, the work excepted, of a few singers and reciters who still made the rounds of the country appearing at the castles of the local nobility, town fairs and other places where crowds of people met together. Owing to the lack of encouragement and patronage, and its dialectic character, this literature was vastly inferior in quality, if not in quantity, to that of the period of the troubadours. The overthrow of the Provencal principalities also made it necessarily different in plan, form, composition and objective. After the disap pearance of the brilliant Provencal courts with their charming and cultured ladies, their heroic and chivalrous knights, their cultured centres, their poet-princes and their literary contests, the reason for being of the trouba dours and their semi-artificial language and literature largely ceased to exist. The trouba dours themselves migrated to the Provencal countries of Spain and Italy where they found a short respite from the fate that was rapidly overtaking their whole literature. But although the unity of the Provencal effort was thus broken an effort was made by the Academy of Toulouse (founded 1324), to encourage the lit erary use of the tongue of the troubadours. Prizes and literary contests were offered and literary titles were given to the successful con testants. Even after the discovery of America this society was still as active as it dare be, and throughout the centuries since then it seems to have maintained some sort of existence, though certainly not a very active one. Gradually, however, the French influence, even in this native society, gained the upper hand and suc ceeded in finally shutting out the Provencal from participation in its contests or sharing its honors (1670). The latter, left to itself, de veloped along the line of least resistance. Scarcely had the stream of courtly poetry ceased to flow, arrested and finally dried up at the fountain-head by the inflow of French cul ture, when the Provencal districts became active in directions that had begun to make them selves noticeable before the overthrow of the troubadours. While, as already stated, the dis tinguishing feature of the literature of the period of the troubadours was the prominence of lyrical poetry to the practical overshadow ing of every other department of literary en deavor, yet Provencal showed, especially toward the latter half of this period, considerable ac tivity in other departments of literature. Numerous epics belong to this period. Some of them were quite lengthy, though they have survived in only a fragmentary form. Various tales and romances presenting the life of the period, allegories, didactic poems, lives of the saints and other similar religious compositions of a moral nature occupied the attention of a class of writers of an inferior order, who ap parently could not aspire to be troubadours. Between these and the troubadours was a body of romancers, some of whom at least found favor at the court. These composed lengthy poetical tales in the manner of the stories of Arthur and other heroes of lengthy romance. There is every reason to believe that these romances were popular in their day and prob ably outlived their authors, though perhaps not everywhere strictly in their original form. The
because of its subject and the added fact that it is in prose while most of the literature of the age was in verse form. (Flamenca,' a very long and artificial love story, instinct with the life of the period in which it was written (dur ing the first quarter of the 13th century), shows the Provencal mind working along the line of romantic tales of intrigue later on developed by the Italian writers. Much in the same form is the long historical romance, the 'Chanso
whose inspiration was the first Cru sade, with its glamor of tradition and its stir ring adventures. The period that followed the disappearance of Provencal as a court literature continued to imitate the !It, rature of the pre ceding period; but the work produced, which was didactic, religious or educational, was of a very poor quality and served from the literary standpoint only to keep alive the habit of and facility in writing. For over 100 years little of interest appeared in Provencal literature, except a number of mystery plays dealing with re ligious subjects. There was a tendency for each writer to make use of his own dialect to the neglect of the literary Provencal. This 100 years, devoid as they were of literary fruit of even mediocre value, were a preparation for a movement that promised to be in a sense more national than the literature of the troubadours. The leader of this new movement, Pey de Garros (b. about 1500; d. 1581), a Gascon, and a great lover of his native country and dialect, did his utmost through his long life to encour age the use of his maternal speech in literature. To this end Fie translated the Psalms into Gas con (1565) and wrote many poems. To this movement to restore the tongue of the south there adhered, among other writers of talent, Louis Bellaut de la Bellaudiere (1532-88) and Claud Brueys (1570-1660); in Languedoc also Pierre Goudelin (1579-1649) ; David Sage (middle of 17th century) ; the avocat, Bonnet de 131'7ierq (active 1616-57), and Francois de Cortetc ti .7; 1—JUJJ 1. I illS movement was car ried on, not only without support from those in authority but with the avowed opposition of the French court. There was talent enough in the south at this period, had the writers worked together, to have made itself felt strongly all over the Provencal countries. But there was no unity of effort or aims and a surprising amount of most promising literary talent was dissipated and in a sense neutralized in more or less petty regional aspirations, jealousies and misunderstandings.