"Provencal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... purity in the Italian tongue; tho' many of his phrases are become obsolete, as in process of time it must needs happen. Chaucer (as you have formerly been told by our learn'd Mr. Rymer) first adorn'd and amplified our barren tongue from the Provencal,[3] which was then the most polish'd of all the modern languages; but this subject has been copiously treated by that great critic, who deserves no little commendation from us his countrymen. For these reasons of time, and resemblance of genius in ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the French Revolution. Translated from the Provencal by Mrs. Catharine A. Janvier. With an Introduction by Thomas A. Janvier. ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... latter was naturally an attractive subject for ridicule. Like everything else in these romances, it is a gross exaggeration of the real sentiment of chivalry, but its peculiar extravagance is probably due to the influence of those masters of hyperbole, the Provencal poets. When a troubadour professed his readiness to obey his lady in all things, he made it incumbent upon the next comer, if he wished to avoid the imputation of tameness and commonplace, to declare himself the slave of her will, which the next was compelled ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... and then something happened. For a time he studied French with tremendous eagerness. But he soon found that for a real knowledge of French you need first to get a thorough grasp of Old French and Provencal. But it proved impossible to do anything with these without an absolutely complete command of Latin. This Juggins discovered could only be obtained, in any thorough way, through Sanskrit, which of course lies at the ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... air, and belong to the aristocracy of the painting world. Diaz, especially, has almost invariably the patrician touch. It lacks the exquisiteness of Monticelli's, in which there is that curiously elevated detachment from the material and the real that the Italians—and the Provencal painter's inspiration and method, as well as his name and lineage, suggest an Italian rather than a French association—exhibit far oftener than the French. But Diaz has a larger sweep, a saner method. He is never eccentric, and he has a dignity that is Iberian, though he is French rather than ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... literature of the Middle Ages is intimately associated with the literature of the Troubadours in the south of France. To express the case more definitely, the literature styled "Provencal," apart from mere differences of dialect, extended from the Limousine to the Roman campagna, and French literature existed only in the northern and central provinces of France, the rest being Provencal-Italian literature. The Italian ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... of animals is excluded. Goat-herds in the Greek ran the shepherd hard; neat-herds and swine-herds abound everywhere except, as concerns the last, in Jewry; even the goose-girl figures, and has in Provencal at ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... and its more modern form of Almond came to us through the French amande (Provencal, amondala), from the Greek and Latin amygdalus. What this word meant is not very clear, but the native Hebrew name of the plant (shaked) is most expressive. The word signifies "awakening," and so is a ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... ou Dictionnaire de la langue d'Oc Ancienne et Moderne, suivi d'un Vocabulaire Francais-Provencal, &c., 4 vols. 4to., sd., 2l. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... watched her with an unceasing jealousy. Much had happened since those days. Madame de Camours' watchings had not been in vain, a decree had been obtained from the Pope annulling the marriage. Much had happened. But even after twenty years the memory of that formal life in the Provencal chateau was vivid enough; and Mrs. Thesiger yawned. Then she laughed. Monsieur de Camours and his mother had always been able ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... was going on, the inner man was by no means neglected. Stewed pullets, potatoes, salad, and etceteras, disappeared with marvellous celerity. The cheer was by no means bad, though decidedly Provencal, as I remarked to my next neighbour, a dark-looking Marsellais; which observation, by the way, brought down upon me the anger of the Gods, as impersonated by a large, fat, dirty Calaisien, sitting opposite. He was a big man, this champion, and, according ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... paradise was created as out of the wrecks of Eden. And as this creation itself is poetry, so its creators were poets; and language was the instrument of their art: 'Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse.' The Provencal Trouveurs, or inventors, preceded Petrarch, whose verses are as spells, which unseal the inmost enchanted fountains of the delight which is in the grief of love. It is impossible to feel them without becoming a portion of that beauty which we contemplate: it were superfluous ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... (Cochin-Chinese, Trin-Chinese, Japanese), Danish (Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Laplandic), Hebrew (Antique, Rabbinic, Samaritan), Egyptian, or Coptic-Egyptian and Coptic, Arabic, Etrusean, Phoenician, Flemish, French (Breton-French, Lorraine-French, Provencal), Gothic and Visi-Gothic, and Greek and Greek-Latin, Modern Greek, Georgian or Iberian, Cretian or Rhetian, Illyrian, Indo-oriental (Angolese, Burmese or Avian, Hindostanee, Malabar, Malayan, Sanscrit), English (Arctic, Breton or Celtic, Scotch-Celtic, Scotch, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... he took off when he began to sing. Old France and New France, and the loves and hates and joys and sorrows of all lands, met that night in the soul of this dwarf with the divine voice, who did not give them his name, so that they called him, for want of a better title, the Provencal. And again two nights afterwards it was the same, and yet again a third night and a fourth, and the simple folk, and wise folk also, went ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... may divide with Provence the glory of being the region where the voice of song was first awakened in modern Europe. Whatever may be the relative claims of the two countries to precedence in this respect, [86] it is certain that under the family of Barcelona, the Provencal of the south of France reached its highest perfection; and, when the tempest of persecution in the beginning of the thirteenth century fell on the lovely valleys of that unhappy country, its minstrels found a hospitable asylum in the court of the kings ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... assures us that "Nowhere, except, perhaps, in some Persian or Provencal love-songs, can be found more ardent expressions ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Bertrand de Born, Vicomte de Hautefort, near Perigueux in Guienne, who incited John to rebel against his father, Henry II. of England. Bertrand holds a distinguished place among the Provencal poets. He is quoted in Dante, "De Vulg. Eloq." l. ii. c. 2. For the translation of some extracts from his poems, see Millot, Hist. Litteraire des Troubadors t. i. p. 210; but the historical parts of that work are, I believe, not to ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... The story is common enough, the characters have nothing original in their conception, and yet we are fascinated by the detailed truth of the portraiture from the first page to the last. The scenes are laid in Farnoux, a town in the old Provencal districts. The ancient views and manners are still retained, and interest us by the force of contrast with our own. Mademoiselle Le Marchand, an odd old maid, with a genius for painting, is really the character of the book. Denise, the heroine, is quietly and faithfully drawn. Various picturesque ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... philosophic student in doubt, whether the language has not since then lost more in sweetness and flexibility, than it has gained in condensation and copiousness)—I read with sedulous accuracy the Minnesinger (or singers of love, the Provencal poets of the Swabian court) and the metrical romances; and then laboured through sufficient specimens of the master singers, their degenerate successors; not however without occasional pleasure from the rude, yet interesting strains of Hans Sachs, the cobbler ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... (Provencal Noel) known as "Marche dei Rei" words of which are attributed to King Rene. The Noel, over two centuries old, was utilized by Bizet in his incidental music ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various
... of language shows us a two-fold tendency,—one of divergence from some common stem, followed by one of concentration, of unity, in the literature. Thus, in France, the Langue d'Oil superseded the richer and more melodious Provencal; in Spain the Castilian predominated; while for several centuries it has been the steady tendency of the High-German to become the language of letters and of the upper classes among the various Teutonic races. Since the Bible-translation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and this would come from the notion of the outward conformity to the Catholic formularies imposed on the Arian Goths by their orthodox protectors. Etymologically, the derivation is good enough, according to Diez, Romanisches Woerterbuch; Provencal ca, dog; Get, Gothic. Before quitting Cagot, we may observe that the derivation of bigot, our bigot, another word of the same kind, is not so clear. Michel says it comes from Vizigothus, Bizigothus. Diez says this is too far-fetched, especially as 'Bigot', 'Bigod', ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... Annunciation on brackets, one figure on each side of the door. The colonnettes and arch moulds are both twisted in this door; in that to the right they are plain; the figures on brackets are similar. The lintels and jambs have elaborate arabesque scrolls, which remind one of Provencal Romanesque ornament. The lower part of the wall has courses of pinkish marble among the white, and bands of inlaid ornament decorate both the wall and the campanile. Above the string course over the doorways is a Romanesque-looking arcade with another ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... little dinners; chief parts, under that charming Presidency, being done by "Grand-Chamberlain Baron de" Something-or-other, "by your humble servant Bielfeld, M. Jordan, and a Marquis d'Argens, famous Provencal gentleman now in the suite of her Highness:" [Bielfeld, ii. 74-78.]—feasts of the Barmecide I much doubt, poor Bielfeld being in this Chapter very fantastic, MISDATEful to a mad extent; and otherwise, except as to general effect, worth little ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... But the Provencal student declared that history was a thoroughly despicable exercise of rhetoric. According to him, the only true history was the natural history of man. Michelet was in the right path when he came in contact with the fistula of Louis ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... this fine work, however, are still favorites on concert programmes, and it has been given in English under the name of "Irene." Gounod's love of romantic themes, and the interest in France which Lamartine's glowing eulogies had excited about "Mireio," the beautiful national poem of the Provencal, M. Frederic Mistral, led the former to compose an opera on a libretto from this work, which was given at the Theatre Lyrique, March 19, 1864, under the name of "Mireille." The music, however, was rather descriptive and lyric than dramatic, as befitted this lovely ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... of the Koran is taught as a dead language in the college of Mecca. By the Danish traveller, this ancient idiom is compared to the Latin; the vulgar tongue of Hejaz and Yemen to the Italian; and the Arabian dialects of Syria, Egypt, Africa, &c., to the Provencal, Spanish, and Portuguese, (Niebuhr, Description ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... to have discovered—a far less serious danger than the disaffection in his northern dominions. This last evil was undoubtedly, so far as Normandy was concerned, owing in great measure to John's own fault. He had intrusted the defence of the Norman duchy to his mercenaries under the command of a Provencal captain—whose real name is unknown—who seems to have adopted for himself the nickname of Lou Pescaire ("the Fisherman")—which the Normans apparently corrupted into "Louvrekaire"—and who habitually treated his employer's peaceable subjects in a fashion in which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... Duperrier. A critic of sorts and a gentleman, living in Provence and perhaps of Provencal ancestry. The verses were written while Malherbe's fame was still local, two years before the king's visit had ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... general, and as time went on, became more and more artificial. The other stream is the colloquial idiom of the common people, which developed ultimately in the provinces into the modern so-called Romance idioms. These are the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Provencal (spoken in Provence, i.e. southeastern France), the Rhaeto-Romance (spoken in the Canton of the Grisons in Switzerland), and the Roumanian, spoken in modern Roumania and adjacent districts. All these Romance languages bear the same relation to the Latin as ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... satirizes his own doings. In Immanuel's Machberoth there is much variety of romantic incident. But it is in satire that he reaches his highest level. Love and wine are the frequent burdens of his song, as they are in the Provencal and Italian poetry of his day. Immanuel was something of a Voltaire in his jocose treatment of sacred things, and pietists like Joseph Karo inhibited the study of the Machberoth. Others, too, described his songs as sensuous and his satires ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... of a word are sometimes determined by accident. Glamour (see p. 145) was popularised by Scott, who found it in old ballad literature. Grail, the holy dish at the Last Supper, would be much less familiar but for Tennyson. Mascot, from a Provencal word meaning sorcerer, dates from Audran's operetta La Mascotte (1880). Jingo first appears in conjurors' jargon of the 17th century. It has been conjectured to represent Basque jinko, God, picked up by sailors. If this is the case, it is ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... man who looked like an Italian or Provencal fisherman, with a shrewd, sunburnt, clean-shaven face. He was leaning over a pack of cards, and was enveloped in a ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... said the boy, a ruddy-faced youth, with gray eyes and auburn hair; "let me play the air that Rene, the troubadour, taught me yesterday. I'll warrant thee 't will set thy feet a-flying, if I can but master the strain," and he hummed over the gay Provencal measure: ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... upon the shore, acquires possession of its treasures, and gives it his name. The claim of Petrarch was indeed somewhat like that of Amerigo Vespucci to the continent which should have derived its appellation from Columbus. The Provencal poets were unquestionably the masters of the Florentine. But they wrote in an age which could not appreciate their merits; and their imitator lived at the very period when composition in the vernacular language began to attract ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... summits, and traversed by beautiful and singular dells, at once soft and secluded, fruitful and wild. We have thus one branch of the Northern religious imagination rising among the Scandinavian fiords, tempered in France by various encounters with elements of Arabian, Italian, Provencal, or other Southern poetry, and then reacting upon Southern England; while other forms of the same rude religious imagination, resting like clouds upon the mountains of Scotland and Wales, met and mingled with the Norman Christianity, retaining even to the latest ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... book which Dante may conceivably have read without coming on some passage which one feels certain he had read, or at the very least containing some information which one feels certain he possessed. A real "Dante's library"[2] would comprise pretty well every book in Latin, Italian, French, or Provencal, "published," if we may use the term, up to the year 1300. Of course a good many Latin books were (may one say fortunately?) in temporary retirement at that time; but even of these, whether, as has been suggested, through volumes, now lost, of "Elegant Extracts," or by whatever other means, ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... in Upper Egypt under General Desaix, a Provencal soldier fell into the hands of the Maugrabins, and was taken by these Arabs into the deserts beyond the ...
— A Passion in the Desert • Honore de Balzac
... family, says Tallemant, "as one might speak of the overthrow of the Greek empire." Her father belonged to an old and noble house of Provence, but removed to Normandy, where he married and died, leaving two children with a heritage of talent and poverty. A trace of the Provencal spirit always clung to Madeleine, who was born in 1607, and lived until the first year of the following century. After losing her mother, who is said to have been a woman of some distinction, she was carefully educated by an uncle ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... crusade that he was so foolish as to take part in. She had women-warriors, who did their cause immense mischief; and unless she has been greatly scandalized, she made her husband fit for heaven in a manner approved neither by the law nor the gospel. The Provencal ladies had no prejudices against Saracens. After her return to Europe, she got herself divorced from Louis, and married Henry Plantagenet, who was much her junior, she having previously been the mistress of his father. It was a mariage de convenance, and, as is sometimes the case with such marriages, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... was his predecessor in poetry, Guido Guinicelli, from whom he could not take his eyes for love and reverence, till the sufferer, who told him there was a greater than himself in the crowd, vanished away through the fire as a fish does in water. The greater one was Arnauld Daniel, the Provencal poet, who, after begging the prayers of the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... it seems drew continually, through Lydgate and Caxton, from Guido di Colonna, whose Latin Romance of the Trojan War was, in turn, a compilation from Dares, Phrygius, Ovid, and Statius. Then Petrarch, Boccacio, and the Provencal poets, are his benefactors; the Romaunt of the Rose is only judicious {357} translation from William of Lorris and John of Meun; Troilus and Creseide, from Lollius of Urbino; The Cock and the Fox, from the Lais of Marie; The House of Fame, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... Though older poems (like that of Robert Wace) are connected with the Confrerie, to him is due the beginning of those "Palinods" sung in honour of the Virgin in the Church of St. Jean des Pres, which were called the "Puy de Conception," like the Puy d'Amour of the Provencal troubadours. The name probably originated in the refrain which ran through all the various metres allowed in the poems which were sent in for competition, as Pierre ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... at my whim but none the less proffer their traps. Yet, the moment a Mouse is needed, that very common animal becomes rare. Braving decorum in his speech, which follows the Latin of his ancestors, the Provencal says, but even more crudely than in my translation: "If you look for ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... fisherman, with his Provencal accent, "a man is a sailor, or he is not; he knows his course, or he is nothing but a fresh-water lubber. I was obstinate, and wished to try the channel. The gentleman took me by the collar, and told me quietly he would strangle me. My mate armed himself with a hatchet, and so ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... of fact that the ethnic type throughout the Po basin is markedly brachycephalic and becomes more pronounced along the northern boundary in the Alps, till it culminates in Piedmont along the frontier of France, where it becomes identical with the broad-headed Savoyards.[368] More than this, Provencal French is spoken in the Dora Baltea Valley of Piedmont; and along the upper Dora Riparia and in the neighboring valleys of the Chisone and Pellice are the villages of the refugee Waldenses, who speak an idiom allied to the Provencal. More than this, the whole Piedmontese ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... The Provencal was completely refuted by a lady who undertook to prove that women show much more self-sacrifice in love than men; that lovers cost very dear, and that the honest woman may consider herself very fortunate if she gets off with spending on them two ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... discovery of the mariners' compass. The first clear notice of it appears in a Provencal poet of the end of the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century it was used by the Norwegians in their voyages to and from Iceland, who made it the device of an order of knighthood of the highest rank; and from a passage in Barber's ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... one friend in the person of the quartermaster, —a Provencal, born in the neighborhood of Nice, whose name was Diard. A friend, whether at the galleys or in the garret of an artist, consoles for many troubles. Now Montefiore and Diard were two philosophers, who consoled each other ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... and Verona, cities near Mantua, helped to form the Tuscan tongue. But besides the brief record of Dante, there are certain accounts of Sordello's life, very confused and conflicting, in the early Italian Chronicles and the Provencal lives of the Troubadours. Tiraboschi sifts these legends, leaving very little of them. According to him, Sordello was a Mantuan of noble family, born at Goito at the close of the twelfth century. He was a poet and warrior, though not, as some reports profess, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... day, near Bazas, that these two encountered Adam de Gourdon, a Provencal knight, with whom the Prince fought for a long while, without either contestant giving way; in consequence a rendezvous was fixed for the November of that year, and afterward the Prince and de Gourdon parted, highly ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... dialects and languages (Provencal, Breton, Alsatian, Corsican, Catalan, Basque, Flemish) overseas departments: ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... and Madame Garschine, whose society and that of their children was to do so much to cheer Stevenson during his remaining months on the Riviera. The French painter Robinet (sometimes in his day known as le Raphael des cailloux, from the minuteness of detail which he put into his Provencal coast landscapes) was a chivalrous and affectionate soul, in whom R. L. S. delighted in spite of his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... brawny butcher is too astonished to defend himself. His nerveless fingers are no longer on the rope; he stands like a stalled ox in front of his homicidal assailant. With the rapidity of lightning Pierre plunges his long Provencal dirk in the executioner's side. The butchered butcher falls with a single bawling outcry and a groan. The crowd is thunderstruck, and the pinioned de Vaudrey is wild with joy. Though bound and helpless, he tries to leap ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... day for the cause of Christ," to quote the annalist of the Order. Several others were wounded, and of these the Prior Giustiniani and his captain, Naro, of Syracuse, died soon after. One of the knights killed in the battle was a Frenchman, Raymond de Loubiere, a Provencal. Another Frenchman, the veteran De Romegas, fought beside Don Juan on the "Reale," and to his counsel and aid the commander-in-chief attributed much of his success in the campaign. The long lists of the Spanish, Neapolitan, ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... their purple nodules of fruit,—where a bright-faced young peasant-girl, with a gay kerchief turbaned about her head with a coquettish tie, lay basking in the sunshine. He heard once more the trip of her voice warbling a Provencal song, while the great ruin of the Roman arene came once more to his vision, with its tufting shrubs and battered arches rising grim and gaunt into the soft Southern sky; the church-bells of the town poured their sweet jangle on his ear again, the murmur of distant voices came ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... case, this journey and this welcome were not fancies but realities. I had come to keep Christmas with my old friend Monsieur de Vielmur according to the traditional Provencal rites and ceremonies in his own entirely Provencal home: an ancient dwelling which stands high up on the westward slope of the Alpilles, overlooking Arles and Tarascon and within sight of Avignon, near the ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... not only in youth but in age. There young and old best learn cheerfulness, patience, self-control, and the spirit of service and of duty. The home is the true school of courtesy, of which woman is always the best practical instructor. "Without woman," says the Provencal proverb, "men were but ill-licked cubs." Philanthropy radiates from the home as from a center. "To love the little platoon we belong to in society," said Burke, "is the germ of all public affections." The wisest and best have not been ashamed to own it to be their greatest ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... foreign yoke. But the queen had encountered no obstacle in her flight, and arrived at Nice five days later. Her passage through Provence was like a triumph. Her beauty, youth, and misfortunes, even certain mysterious reports as to her adventures, all contributed to arouse the interest of the Provencal people. Games and fetes were improvised to soften the hardship of exile for the proscribed princess; but amid the outbursts of joy from every town, castle, and city, Joan, always sad, lived ever in her silent grief and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... so profound an influence upon the literary history of other peoples as the poetry of the troubadours. Attaining the highest point of technical perfection in the last half of the twelfth and the early years of the thirteenth century, Provencal poetry was already popular in Italy and Spain when the Albigeois crusade devastated the south of France and scattered the troubadours abroad or forced them to seek other means of livelihood. The earliest lyric ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... of St. Enimie is fully set forth in a Provencal poem of the thirteenth century by the troubadour Bertrand de Marseilles, who received his information from his friend the Prior of the monastery at Sainte-Enimie, which in the Middle Ages was the most important religious house in the Gevaudan. The MS. is preserved in the library of the Arsenal, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... even London were evidently behind the fashion. Margaret's hair was bound with a broad band of daisies, and Yolande's with violets, both in allusion to their names, Yolande being the French corruption of Violante, her Provencal name, in allusion to the golden violet. Jean thought of the Scottish thistle, and studied the dresses, tight-fitting 'cotte hardis' of bright, deep, soft, rose colour, edged with white fur, and white skirts embroidered with their appropriate flowers. She wondered ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gods!" exclaimed Marillac, who saw that his bold looks had produced their effect, "you are a Provencal, and I a Gascon. You have a ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... band that started long ago Upon their journey to a-Becket's shrine, Were happy that a poet's pen divine Inspired by all a genial wit can know, Or sympathetic human heart bestow, Recorded in immortal rhythmic line, As sweet as breath of old Provencal wine, Their pilgrim tales and songs of joy ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... born of a good Provencal stock at Aix, in the year 1715. He had scarcely any of that kind of education which is usually performed in school-classes, and he was never able to read either Latin or Greek. Such slight knowledge as he ever got of the famous ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... crowded thoroughfares, of our American cities. Although founded by the Phoceans, three thousand years ago, it has scarcely an edifice of greater antiquity than three or four centuries, and the tourist must content himself with wandering through the narrow streets of the old town, observing the Provencal costumes, or strolling among Turks and Moors ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... poesy and imagination. This is, indeed, so true that he has introduced into his work all the ideas on which he had based an early unfinished poem called 'Genesis.' He carries us to an enchanted garden, the Paradou—a name which one need hardly say is Provencal for Paradise*—and there Serge Mouret, on recovering from brain fever, becomes, as it were, a new Adam by the side of a new Eve, the fair and winsome Albine. All this part of the book, then, is poetry in prose. The author ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... would translate them, "Because I see it in that true mirror who in Himself affords a likeness to [or of] all other things, while nothing gives back to Him a likeness of Himself." Here pareglio corresponds with the Provencal parelh and the later French pareil,—and the Provencal phrase rendre le parelha affords an example of similar application to that of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... the west and their shadows to stream down the road in front of them. Wary and careful they must be, with watchful eyes to the right and the left, for this was no man's land, and their only passports were those which hung from their belts. Frenchmen and Englishmen, Gascon and Provencal, Brabanter, Tardvenu, Scorcher, Flayer, and Free Companion, wandered and struggled over the whole of this accursed district. So bare and cheerless was the outlook, and so few and poor the dwellings, that Sir Nigel began to have fears as to whether he might find food and quarters for his little ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in spite of the abstruse historic background upon which he moves. Of the story of Paracelsus Browning merely reinterpreted the recorded facts; whereas he brushes aside the greater part of the Sordello story, as told confusedly and inconsistently by Italian and Provencal tradition. The whole later career of the Mantuan poet as an accomplished and not unsuccessful man of the world, as the friend of Raymond of Toulouse and Charles of Anjou, rewarded with ample estates by the latter for substantial services,—is either rejected as myth, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... infusion of the courtlier Norman element, which gives to his writings something of the high-bred air that the short upper-lip gives to the human countenance. In his earlier poems he was under the influence of the Provencal Troubadours, and in his "Flower and the Leaf," and other works of a similar class, he riots in allegory; he represents the cardinal virtues walking about in human shape; his forests are full of beautiful ladies with coronals on their heads; courts of love are held beneath the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... the Arabic should be retranslated into the new Hebrew, he held, and he furnished an example by recasting the first part of Maimuni's Moreh Nebukim. His modernized version, lucid and fluent, printed alongside of Ibn Tibbon's, presents a striking contrast to the stiffness and obscurity of the Provencal scholar's. Levin was also the first to write in the Yiddish, or Judeo-German, dialect, for the instruction of the masses, which made him the butt of more than one satire. But what was generally regarded ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... fortnight or so, he had to modify that view, for Bidan (Prosper) prospered more rapidly even than himself. That grey look was out of the boy's face within three weeks. It was wonderful to watch him come back to life, till at last he could say, with his dreadful Provencal twang, that he felt "tres biang." A most amiable youth, he had been a cook, and his chief ambition was to travel till he had attained the summit of mortal hopes, and was cooking at the Ritz in London. When he came to us his ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... vintage! that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... in here, I shall be inclined to throw a rind of cheese at his head," I thought; but he did not beard me in my den. The voice passed away, and presently I heard another, unmistakably that of a woman, giving vent to strange profanities in softest Provencal French. The speaker was apostrophising some person or animal, who was, according to her, the most insupportable of Heaven's creatures; and at last, with calls upon martyred saints, and cries of "Fanny-anny, Fanny-anny," there mingled a scuffling and trotting which soon died away ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... the old Latin speech in Gaul with that of the Teutonic invaders gave rise there to two very distinct dialects. These were the Langue d'Oc, or Provencal, the tongue of the South of France and of the adjoining regions of Spain and Italy; and the Langue d'Oil, or French proper, the language of the North. [Footnote: The terms Langue d'Oc and Langue d'Oil arose from the use of different words for yes, which in the tongue of the South was oc, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... my simple song set you jingling? Nay, if I took and translated that hard heart into our Provencal facilities, I could so play about it ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... his thirty-ninth year. As a scholar, in his professional work, he had acquired a versatile knowledge of the Romance languages, and was an adept in old French and Provencal poetry; he had given a course of twelve lectures on English poetry before the Lowell Institute in Boston, which had made a strong impression on the community, and his work on the series of British Poets in connection with Professor Child, especially his biographical ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... play are reproduced with general fidelity in the opera. In the first act there are scenes of gayety in the house of Violetta—dancing, feasting, and love-making. Among the devotees of the courtesan is Alfredo Germont, a young man of respectable Provencal family. He joins in the merriment, singing a drinking song with Violetta, but his devotion to her is unlike that of his companions. He loves her sincerely, passionately, and his protestations awaken ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... sale came to Wanley, and he notifies in his diary the arrival of books in Chinese, Armenian, Samaritan, Hebrew, Chaldee, Aethiopic and Arabic (both in Asiatic and African letters), in Persian, Turkish, Russian, Greek (ancient and modern), Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Provencal, High German, Low German, Flemish, Anglo-Saxon, English, Welsh, and Irish, in all about ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... despair of this stout Nautilus, as you do; and in four days we shall know what to hold to on the Pacific tides. Besides, flight might be possible if we were in sight of the English or Provencal coast; but on the Papuan shores, it is another thing; and it will be time enough to come to that extremity if the Nautilus does not recover itself again, which I look ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... to be descendants of the old Provencals, at one time settled on both sides of the Pyrenees, though forming, at that time, part of Spain. Their language is almost pure Provencal, and they differ, as history shows in a hundred ways, from the inhabitants of the rest of Spain. The Castilians, occupying the centre of the country, are what we know as "Spaniards," and may be taken to hold a middle place among these widely differing nationalities, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... the gothic style, but that it had additions of a more modern date; the large and gloomy hall, however, into which she now entered, was entirely gothic, and sumptuous tapestry, which it was now too dark to distinguish, hung upon the walls, and depictured scenes from some of the antient Provencal romances. A vast gothic window, embroidered with CLEMATIS and eglantine, that ascended to the south, led the eye, now that the casements were thrown open, through this verdant shade, over a sloping lawn, to the tops of dark woods, that hung upon the brow of the promontory. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... eye becomes accustomed to the bareness and greyness of this Provencal landscape; and then we find that the scenery round Avignon is eminently picturesque. The view from Les Doms—which is a hill above the Pope's palace, the Acropolis, as it were, of Avignon—embraces a wide stretch ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... chain with two rings or staples:—at the southern end there is the Roman, or Latin; at the northern end the Keltic, Teutonic, or Gothic; and the links beginning with the southern end, are the Romance, including the Provencal, the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, with their different dialects, then the Norman-French, and lastly ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Roger de Loria, advancing at daybreak to attack the Provencal Fleet of Charles of Naples (1283) in the harbour of Malta, "did a thing which should be reckoned to him rather as an act of madness," says Muntaner, "than of reason. He said, 'God forbid that I should attack them, all asleep as they are! Let ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... last words, and end this singular trilogy. The night had become day; and the day has again become night. Jourgniac, worn down with uttermost agitation, has fallen asleep, and had a cheering dream: he has also contrived to make acquaintance with one of the volunteer bailiffs, and spoken in native Provencal with him. On Tuesday, about one in the morning, his Agony is reaching ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... little bachelor flat half-way up Shaftesbury Avenue on the right-hand side. Far more French than English, in spite of his English name, he quickly introduced himself into the good graces of Jean's father—the short, dapper old restaurateur, Louis Libert, a Provencal from the remote little town of Aix, a Frenchman whom many years' residence in London had failed ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... motion of the troops seemed to quicken. Now he beheld men from the lands of the sun, the short, dark, fierce soldiers of the Midi, youths of Marseilles and youths of the first Roman province, whose native language was Provencal and not French. He remembered the men of the famous battalion who had marched from Marseilles to Paris singing Rouget de Lisle's famous song, and giving it their name, while they tore down an ancient kingdom. ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... its midst of May; Thou who upon thy shield of argent bearest The bold device, "The loftiest is the fairest!" As bending low thy stainless crest, "The vestal throned by the west" Accords the old Provencal crown Which blends her own with thy renown; Arcadian Sidney, nursling of the muse, Flower of fair chivalry, whose bloom was fed With daintiest Castaly's most silver dews, Alas! how soon thy amaranth leaves were shed; ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... resistless Dulness rose; 35 Goths, Priests, or Vandals,—all were Learning's foes. Till Julius[55] first recall'd each exiled maid, And Cosmo own'd them in the Etrurian shade: Then, deeply skill'd in love's engaging theme, The soft Provencal pass'd to Arno's stream: 40 With graceful ease the wanton lyre he strung; Sweet flow'd the lays—but love was all he sung. The gay description could not fail to move, For, led by nature, all are ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... Nostre-Dame, called Nostradamus (1503-1566), a Provencal astrologer, whose prophecies were published under the title of "Centuries." He was invited to the French court by Catherine de' Medici, and became the doctor of ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... the faces of their saints, the glory of golden light that gleams about the figure of Christ in heaven in Tintoretto's decorations, the blank bright walls of the Doge's palace undermined by darkling and shadowy arcades, the refrain of a Provencal song, the sharp shadow under the visor of Verrocchio's equestrian statue, the thought-provoking chiaroscuro of Rembrandt's figure paintings—these expedients are all designed to attract attention to the essential ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... formerly in general use; it is now seldom made a medium. There is occasionally a course delivered in English, Italian, or French,—in Berlin often in one of the Sclavonic languages. Modern Literature and Philology are by no means extensively cultivated. Lectures on the Provencal, the Langue d'Oil, the Old-German, the Cyrillic, are not uncommon, though but poorly attended. The study of the modern languages themselves must be pursued with private teachers. A knowledge of these, as well ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... Braggart and liar, he had made the common people believe that it was he who had cut off the head of the governor of the Bastille. So they called him Jourdan, Coupe-tete. That was not his real name, which was Mathieu Jouve. Neither was he a Provencal; he came from Puy-en-Velay. He had formerly been a muleteer on those rugged heights which surround his native town; then a soldier without going to war—war had perhaps made him more human; after that he had kept ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... of April I was entirely cured of my last misfortune. I had recovered all my usual vigour, and I accompanied my converter to church every day, never missing a sermon. We likewise spent the evening together at the cafe, where we generally met a great many officers. There was among them a Provencal who amused everybody with his boasting and with the recital of the military exploits by which he pretended to have distinguished himself in the service of several countries, and principally in Spain. As he was truly a source of amusement, everybody pretended to believe him in order ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... same kind we have long been familiar in the Troubadour poetry of Provence. But Provencal literature has a strong chivalrous tincture, and every one is aware with what relentless fury the civilisation which produced it was stamped out by the Church. The literature of the Wandering Students, on the other hand, owes nothing to chivalry, and emanates from a class which formed a ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... Provencal declared; "and those chaps must be crazy to take them through the forest, where the rains of the past few days have left the roads in such a state that they sink in the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... this differed from the constitutionalists who would only defend it with the law. At its head were the brilliant orators of the Gironde, [Footnote: The name of the river Garonne, after its confluence with the Dordogne.] who gave their name to the party, Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonne, and the Provencal Isnard, who had a style of still more impassioned eloquence than theirs. Its chief leader was Brissot, who, a member of the corporation of Paris during the last session, had subsequently become a member of the assembly. The opinions of Brissot, ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... speak French fluently, and Beatrice had recourse to interpreters when she received the visit of King Charles VIII. at Asti, and was required to make civil speeches in reply to his compliments. But they read Provencal poetry and translations of Spanish romances from the rare volumes, sumptuously bound in crimson velvet with enamelled and jewelled clasps and corners, that were among the most precious treasures of Duchess Leonora's cabinet. ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... of service to Count Thibaut during his stay in England. This Giffard had never been so far south before, and he seemed to feel that he had got into some sort of enchanted realm. He was more soldier than courtier, but his eyes said a great deal. The luxurious abundance of a Provencal castle, the smooth ease of the serving, the wit and gaiety of the people, all were new to him. He had attended state banquets, but they were as unlike the entertainment here provided as was the stern simplicity of his boyhood home in Normandy, or the rough-and- ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... busy with her dresses, assisted by Blanche's Provencal maid, Louise. About eleven o'clock, however, Jean tapped at her door and said: "A peasant from Allamont, across the valley, has brought a letter, mademoiselle. He says an English gentleman gave it to him to deliver to you personally. He ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... says, corresponds to the writing, with planchette, of scraps from the Chanson de Roland, by a person who had never consciously read a line of it, and who did not even know what stratum of Old French was represented by the fragments. Miss X. seems not to know either; for she calls it 'Provencal'. Similar instances of memory revived are not very uncommon in dreams. Miss X. can consciously put a group of fanciful characters into the crystal, while this is beyond the power of the seer known to the writer, who has attempted to perceive what a friend is doing ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... ancient historians. "How often," he says, "have we not seen hearers agitated by terrible spasms, weep and laugh at once, and manifest all the symptoms of delirium and fever, while listening to the masterpieces of our great masters." He relates the case of a young Provencal musician, who blew out his brains at the door of the Opera after a second hearing of Spontini's "Vestale," having previously explained in a letter, that after this ecstatic enjoyment, he did not ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... every Tuesday with the same unvarying success. Helene was touched by the kindliness with which Monsieur Rambaud lent himself to the fun; she was well aware that, with Provencal frugality, he had long limited his daily fare to an anchovy and half-a-dozen olives. As for Abbe Jouve, he never knew what he was eating, and his blunders and forgetfulness supplied an inexhaustible fund of amusement. Jeanne, meditating some prank in this respect, was even now stealthily watching ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... highly artificial poetry produced abundantly by the Moors during their occupation of the south of Spain; it excludes also the philosophical and religious poetry of the Spanish Jews, by no means despicable in thought or form. Catalan poetry, once written in the Provencal manner and of late happily revived, also lies ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... woman, A wrinkled granddame, stands in the sunshine, Stirs the brown soil in an acre of violets— Large odorous violets—and answers slowly A child's swift babble; or else at noon The labourers come. They rest in the shadow, Eating their dinner of herbs, and are merry. Soft speech Provencal under the olives! Like a queen's raiment from days long perished, Breathing aromas of old unremembered Perfumes, and shining in dust-covered palaces With sudden hints of forgotten splendour— So on the lips of the peasant his language, His only now, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... speaking as though he were addressing the Chambre, and as though he had known Africa intimately from his childhood, he noticed gradually and with alarm that the topic was changing; just a moment ago it was Africa and its luckless niggers; the Provencal imagination picturing them in glowing colours, and the Provencal tongue rolling off their disabilities and woes. One would have fancied from the fervour of the man that is was Ferminard who had just returned from ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... twelve on each side of the hall. A handsome, athletic set they were, dressed in what we should call the Montfort livery—a garb which set off their natural good looks abundantly—the dark features of Drogo; the light eyes and flaxen hair of the son of a Provencal maiden, our Hubert; were fair types of the varieties of appearance to be met ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... our company consisted of a tall well-looking officer, wearing the croix d'honneur; a shrewd old Provencal merchant, to whom we were indebted for much valuable travelling information; two young friends, one of whom sang very agreeably and unaffectedly, and the other, a lively French Falstaff ate and talked ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... familiar. The various dialects which sprang from the corruption of the Latin were called by the common name of romans. The name was then applied to any piece of literature composed in this vernacular instead of in the ancient classical Latin. And as the favorite kind of writing in Provencal, Old French, and Spanish was the tale of chivalrous adventure that was called par excellence, a roman, romans, or romance. The adjective romantic is much later, implying, as it does, a certain degree of critical attention to the species of fiction which it describes in order ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Long ago this mysterious colony quitted Spain, and settled on the tongue of land on which it is to this day. Whence it came no one knew, and it spoke an unknown tongue. One of its chiefs, who understood Provencal, begged the commune of Marseilles to give them this bare and barren promontory, where, like the sailors of old, they had run their boats ashore. The request was granted; and three months afterwards, around the twelve or fifteen small vessels which had brought these ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... casual reader of verse, disconcerted by the difference between Pound's poetry and that on which his taste has been trained, attributes his own difficulties to excessive scholarship on the part of the author. "This," he will say of some of the poems in Provencal form or on Provencal subjects, "is archaeology; it requires knowledge on the part of its reader, and true poetry does not require such knowledge." But to display knowledge is not the same thing as to expect it on the part of the reader; ...
— Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry • T.S. Eliot
... and virtuous. Whatever her true nature was, she had influence among the foremost men of that gay set which was imitating the court circles of old, and an influence which had become not altogether agreeable to the immoral Provencal noble who entertained and supported the giddy coterie. Perhaps the extravagance of the languid Creole was as trying to Barras as it became afterward to her ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... that he was a coxcomb of the first water, showy but superficial, and though personally brave, sure to be bewildered when he found himself for the first time working the wheels and springs of that puzzling machine, an army in the field. A caustic old Provencal marquis, with his breast glittering with the stars of a whole constellation of knighthood, yet who sat with the cross-belts and cartouche-box of the rank and file upon him, agreeing with all the premises, stoutly denied the conclusions. "He is a coxcomb," said the old Marquis. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... de la Roche-Hugon was a young Provencal patronized by Napoleon; his fate might probably be some splendid embassy. He had won the Emperor by his Italian suppleness and a genius for intrigue, a drawing-room eloquence, and a knowledge of manners, which are so good ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... and his career are as unaffectedly charming as his style, and more of a piece than his elaborate works of fiction. A sunny Provencal childhood is clouded by family misfortunes; then comes a year of wretched slavery as usher in a provincial school; then the inevitable journey to Paris with a brain full of verses and dreams, and the beginning of a life of Bohemian nonchalance, to which we Anglo-Saxons ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... of the divans close by and smoking. "These brown chaps have deuced fine eyes. There doesn't seem to be any lack of expression in them. And that reminds me, there is at fellow arrived here to-day who looks for all the world like an Egyptian, of the best form. He is a Frenchman, though; a Provencal,—every one knows him,—he is the famous ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... and at this juncture Miss Spencer's cousin, the fortunate possessor of her sacred savings and of the hand of the Provencal countess, emerged from the little dining-room. He stood on the threshold for an instant, removing the stone from a plump apricot which he had brought away from the table; then he put the apricot into his mouth, and while he let it sojourn there, gratefully, stood looking at us, with his long legs ...
— Four Meetings • Henry James
... of his phrases are become obsolete, as in process of time it must needs happen. Chaucer (as you have formerly been told by our learned Mr. Rymer) first adorned and amplified our barren tongue from the Provencal, [Footnote: No one now believes this. An excellent discussion of the subject will be found in Professor Lounsbury's Studies in Chaucer, ii. 429-458.] which was then the most polished of all the modern languages; but this subject has been copiously treated by that great critic, who ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... supplied by himself. In the poems of the Vita Nuova, Beatrice, until her death, was to him simply a poetical ideal, a type of abstract beauty, chosen according to the fashion of the day after the manner of the Provencal poets, but in a less carnal sense than theirs. "And by the fourth nature of animals, that is, the sensitive, man has another love whereby he loves according to sensible appearance, even as a beast.... And by the fifth and final ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... first act peasant women in the service of Thibaut, a rich country Squire, are collecting fruit. Georgette, Thibaut's young wife, controls their work. In compliance with a general request she treats them to a favorite provencal song, in which a young girl, forgetting her first vows made to a young soldier, gives her hand to another suitor. She is interrupted by the sound of trumpets. Thibaut hurrying up in great distress asks the women to hide themselves at once, because ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... absinthe in five gulps—a performance that it would make a cow shudder to watch—threw back his head, and, with a hoarse burr, called for another. This time he spoke English; but the burr was decidedly Scotch. Pigalle now looked around at him—gross, pleasant, Provencal Pigalle—and nodded; then went on placidly shuffling the tiny cards in his great ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... ci-devants, and cannot endure the republicans—simple enough; if he wants a throne he must needs strangle Liberty. Keep the matter a secret between us. This is what I will do; I will stay here till to-morrow and be blind; but beware of the agent; that cursed Provencal is the devil's own valet; he has the ear of Fouche just as I have that of ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... lyrics, the ballade, rondel and Noel, amorous songs of French courtiers, pious hymns of French monks, began to sing themselves in England. The new grace and delicacy is upon every page of Chaucer. What was first Provencal and then French, became English when Chaucer touched it. From the shadow and grimness and elegiac pathos of Old English poetry we come suddenly into the light and color and gayety of Southern France. [Footnote: See the passage from Legouis quoted in the "Notes ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... one who has read his Renan, and Blanche Willis Howard, in Guenn, makes her priest exclaim, "Monsieur, I would fight with France against any other nation, but I would fight with Brittany against France. I love France. I am a Frenchman. But first of all I am a Breton." The Provencal speaks of France as if she were a foreign country, and fights for her as if she were his alone. What is true of France is true in a measure of England. Devonshire men are notoriously Devonshire men first and last. If this is true of what have become integral parts of kingdom or republic by centuries ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... half influenced by the pressure of the older and more conservative of the English bishops. There was much of the foreign movement, however, which found no place in England. Difference of tongue shut out Norman and Englishman from the influence of the new Provencal poetry, and for a century to come England owed nothing to the finished art of the South. The strip of sea which kept aloof all European tumults shut out also the speculations in politics and government which were ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... sense of the word 'ballad,' or rather of its French and Provencal predecessors, balada, balade (derived from the late Latin ballare, to dance), was 'a song intended as the accompaniment to a dance,' a sense long obsolete.[1] Next came the meaning, a simple song of sentiment or romance, of two verses or more, ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... principal residence, Pezenas Toulouse, or Bordeaux; but do not be persuaded to go to Aix en Provence, which, by experience, I know to be at once the hottest and the coldest place in the world, from the ardor of the Provencal sun, and the sharpness of the Alpine winds. I also earnestly recommend to you, for your complaint upon your breast, to take, twice a-day, asses' or (what is better mares' milk), and that for these six months at least. Mingle turnips, as much as ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... longer in conformity with the principles of the Gospel as inculcated in the Bible and delivered to them by their fathers. Their ancient manuscripts, still extant, attest to the purity of their doctrines. They are written, like the Nobla Leycon, in the Romance or Provencal—the earliest of the modern classical languages, the language of the troubadours—though now only spoken as a patois in Dauphiny, Piedmont, Sardinia, the north of Spain, and ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... Sandoz settled himself on the couch in the required attitude. His back was turned, but all the same the conversation continued for another moment, for he had that very morning received a letter from Plassans, the little Provencal town where he and the artist had known each other when they were wearing out their first pairs of trousers on the eighth form of the local college. However, they left off talking. The one was working with his mind far away from the world, while the other grew stiff ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... in the two large volumes of M. Petit de Julleville and his fellow-labourers, to whom and to the writings of M. Gaston Paris I am on almost every page indebted. Many matters in dispute have here to be briefly stated in one way; there is no space for discussion. Provencal literature does not appear in this volume. It is omitted from the History of M. Petit de Julleville and from that of M. Lanson. In truth, except as an influence, it forms no part of ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... language, and acquaintance with the ordinary French literature; I took lessons in various bodily exercises, in none of which, however, I made any proficiency; and at Montpellier I attended the excellent winter courses of lectures at the Faculte des Sciences, those of M. Anglada on chemistry, of M. Provencal on zoology, and of a very accomplished representative of the eighteenth century metaphysics, M. Gergonne, on logic, under the name of Philosophy of the Sciences. I also went through a course of the higher mathematics ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... Mefistofele, called the Serenade: La Luna immobile. She consulted her mother, and they sang it. The crowds below, swollen to a block of the street, were dead still, showing the instinctive good manners of the people. Then mademoiselle astonished them with a Provencal or Cevennes air, Huguenot, though she was Catholic; but it suited her mezzo-soprano tones; and it rang massively of the martial-religious. To what heights of spiritual grandeur might not a Huguenot France have marched! Dudley ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... draught of vintage, that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country-green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... Greek peasant was so much less intelligent than the Provencal that he can have failed to see what the least observant must have noticed. He knew what my rustic neighbours know so well. The scribe, whoever he may have been, who was responsible for the fable was in the best possible circumstances for correct knowledge of the subject. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... and, I admit it, thinking of Lucille—thinking very practically, however. For I was reflecting with satisfaction over some small improvements I had effected—with a Norfolk energy which, no doubt, gave offence to some—during the short time that the Vicomte and I had passed in the Provencal chateau. I had the pleasant conviction that Lucille's health could, at all events, come to no harm from a residence in one of the oldest castles in France. No very lover-like reflections, the high-flown will cry. So be it. Each must love in his own ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... the insipid and immoral songs of the Provencal bards gave place to the immortal productions of the great creators of the European languages. Dante led the way in Italy, and gave to the world the "Divine Comedy"—a masterpiece of human genius, which raised him to the rank of Homer and Virgil. Petrarch followed in his steps, and, if not as profound ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord |
