The Troubadours by H.J. Chaytor
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page 5 of 124 (04%)
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becomes chant_a_r in Provençal but chant_e_r in French. But north and
south of the boundary thus determined there was, in the absence of any great mountain range or definite geographical line of demarcation, an indeterminate zone, in which one dialect probably shaded off by easy gradations into the other. Within the region thus described as Provençal, several separate dialects existed, as at the present day. Apart from the Franco-Provençal on the north-east, which we have excluded, there was Gascon in the south-west and the modern _départements_ of the Basses and Hautes Pyrénées; Catalonian, the dialect of Roussillon, which was brought into Spain in the seventh century and still survives in Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands. The rest of the country may be subdivided by a line to the north of which _c_ before _a_ becomes _ch_ as in French, cant_a_re producing chant_a_r, while southwards we find _c(k)_ remaining. The Southern dialects are those of Languedoc and Provence; north of the line were the Limousin and Auvergne dialects. At the present day these dialects have diverged very widely. In the early middle ages the difference between them was by no means so great. Moreover, a literary [4] language grew up by degrees, owing to the wide circulation of poems and the necessity of using a dialect which could be universally intelligible. It was the Limousin dialect which became, so to speak, the backbone of this literary language, now generally known as Provençal, just as the Tuscan became predominant for literary purposes among the Italian dialects. It was in Limousin that the earliest troubadour lyrics known to us were composed, and this district with the adjacent Poitou and Saintonge may therefore be reasonably regarded as the birthplace of Provençal lyric poetry. Hence the term "Provençal" is not entirely appropriate to describe the |
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