We of the English-speaking race are apt to wonder at this love of a local dialect.  This vigorous attempt to create a first-rate literature, alongside and independent of the national literature, seems strange or unnatural.  We are accustomed to one language, spoken over immense areas, and we rejoice to see it grow and spread, more and more perfectly unified.  With all their local color, in spite of their expression of provincial or colonial life, the writings of a Kipling are read and enjoyed wherever the English language has penetrated.  In Italy we find patriots and writers working with utmost energy to bring into being a really national language.  Nearly all the governments of Europe seek to impose the language of the capital upon the schools.  Unification of language seems a most desirable thing, and, superficially considered, the tendency would appear to be in that direction.  But the truth is that there exists all over Europe a war of tongues.  The Welsh, the Basques, the Norwegians, the Bohemians, the Finns, the Hungarians, are of one mind with Daudet and Mistral, who both express the sentiment, “He who holds to his language, holds the key of his prison.”

So Roumanille loved and cherished the melodious speech of the Rhone valley.  He hoped to see the langue d’oc saved from destruction, he strove against the invasion of the northern speech that threatened to overwhelm it.  He wrote sweet verses and preached the gospel of the home-speech.  One day he discovered a boy whom he calls “l’enfant sublime,” and the pupil soon carried his dreams to a realization far beyond his fondest hopes.  Not Roumanille, but Frederic Mistral has made the new Provencal literature what it is.  In him were combined all the qualities, all the powers requisite for the task, and the task grew with time.  It became more than a question of language.  Mistral soon came to seek not only the creation of an independent literature, he aimed at nothing less than a complete revolution, or rather a complete rebirth, of the mental life of southern France.  Provence was to save her individuality entire.  Geographically at the central point of the lands inhabited by the so-called Latin races, she was to regain her ancient prominence, and cause the eyes of her sisters to turn her way once more with admiration and affection.  The patois of Saint-Remy has been developed and expanded into a beautiful literary language.  The inertia of the Provencals themselves has been overcome.  There is undoubtedly a new intellectual life in the Rhone valley, and the fame of the Felibres and their great work has gone abroad into distant lands.

The purpose, then, of the present dissertation, will be to give an account of the language of the Felibres, and to examine critically the literary work of their acknowledged chief and guiding spirit, Frederic Mistral.