MEDIEVALISM IN A MINORITY LANGUAGE: Frédéric Mistral’s Wish-Fulfillment Provençal Past

Abstract

Frédéric Mistral is the only figure in the Felibrige to have devoted a significant portion of his oeuvre to the Middle Ages. This essay offers a new reading of his two works situated in the Middle Ages – the romance Nerto (1884), and the drama La Rèino Jano (Queen Joanna) (1890). It argues that as a belated Romantic, Mistral repudiates the evils of modernity. His medievalism reflects and gives voice to his own political vision whereby the contemporary situation is displaced into a wish-fulfillment fourteenth century, in which France is conspicuous by its absence.