Proust

led him to establish the principle iluit diem-
ical compounds arc of fixed proportions how-

3652_________________________Provencal

medheval poets. Guiraut Riquier (d. 1294),
who oil en success! ully reproduces the fresh-

ever prepared, known as ProustV Law. I ness of earlier days, is one of the last of the

Proust, Marcel (1871-102.0, French nov-
elist, was Lorn and lived all his life in ParN..
After igo2 an invalid, he pave up miscellane-
ous literary work and devoted himself to a
long novel which was to recapture his mem-
ories of his whole experience. This novel A
la recherche dii temps perdu (ior,<-i02(>)
ran to 15 vols. in French, 7 in the English
translation by C. K. Scott Mancrieff (ii)j2-
1932). Proust is the most distinguished
French writer of the present century, and his
novel, called Remembrance of Things Past
in English, is one of the great novels of the
world.

Prout, Samuel (178^-[852), Knglish paint-
er in water-color, born at Plymouth.. His
East Indium an Ashore (iKnj) shows a re-
markable talent for marine painting; but he
became famous as the painter of cathedrals,
cities, and market-places.

Provencal Language and Literature.
Provencal, the general term for the tongue
of southern France, is one of the Romance
languages, and none of the sister tongues
possesses a literary monument so ancient as
the Boethius fragment (roth century). Pho-
netically (and geographically), Provencal
stands midway between Italian and Spanish
on the one hand and French on the other.
Through political events northern French lie-
came the official language of the s. from the
i$th century. But in Beam the southern dia-
lect was preserved till the 17th century. Lit-
erary production of some kind has never
ceased; but the works belong properly to
dialect literature, and are composed in the
speech of Provence (proper), Languedoc, or
Gascony. Mediaeval Provcnqal literature may
be divided into four classes,

i. Lyrical Poetry.—There seems to be no
doubt that the courtly lyrics of the trouba-
dours had their origin in popular poetry. The
facts known to us are not sufficient to ac-
count for the finished state of Provencal lit-
erature in the poems of the earliest trouba-
dour, William tx., Count of Poitiers (d.
1127), which arc licentious but full of spirit.
The poems by Bernart de Ventadour prob-
ably appeal to modern taste more than those
of any other troubadour: they are elegant,
tender, simple, and truly inspired. Berlran de
Bern's historical importance has probably
been exaggerated (partly owing to Dante);
but his warlike ditties, love poems1 and
secure him a place among the best

great poets. The foundation of a poetical
academy at Toulouse (i.^.O. and the com-
position, b\ its chancellor, of a Poetics of
troubadour poetry (the Leys d'Amors), bear
eloquent testimony that the literature was
really dead.

Hut after the middle ages the influence of
the troubadours spread, through Petrarch,
over the uhole of Europe. The troubadours
never addressed unmarried women. The ob-
jects of their adulation wen- mostly great
ladies, the wives of their patrons. The mis-
tress was the feudal lord, the poet her vassal.
With such a code, which was zealously fost-
ered by the ladies themselves at courts like
that of Kleanor of Poitiers, much of the
poetry was necessarily conventional and
much of the love feigned. Still, \ve have evi-
dence that ca^es of true affection and of true
inspiration were by no means rare, and that
at times the relations between poet and be-
loved were anything but platonic. The love
poem ivUM called the r«;/sv>, and rhymed in
the most complicated fashion; indeed, this
question of rhyme played a great part in all
the genres. The sinwntc was devoted in the
main to non-amorous poetry (mostly po-
litical), ami the tenso to disputes (real or
pretended) between two or more poets. If
we except Hit* crusading songs, which arc per-
haps rather A/IWH/W, we have only a few
religious lyrics,

2, Epic and Narrative, Poetry.—It used to
be held that there once existed a large body
of Provencal epic poetry, now lost; but more
recent research has proved that the few
poems of the kind extant art.1 derived from
northern French originals. Of Provencal or-
igin are the. ntwas, which have considerable
literary merit, and are important as showing
the manners of the time. The longest and
most valuable is the Flumt'nt'a, a mine for
the historian of literatim* and civilization.

3. Didactic, £/^T(^/OT.-*lncluding religious
and secular, There is no complete prose trans-
lation of the Bible, but several of the books
have been rendered separately, often with
skill and charm. First in bulk of the secular
didactic are the vast encyclopaedias. Many
scientific subjects were treated separately.
Among histories we have a highly important
Wianstm de la Croiwdr. A number of cmen-

, written for the instruction of trou-
badours, jolars (jongleurs), serving men and
women, and other classes of society, arc as