Old Occitan ( Modern Occitan : occitan ancian , Catalan : occità antic ), also called Old Provençal , was the earliest form of the Occitano-Romance languages , as attested in writings dating from the eighth through the fourteenth centuries. Old Occitan generally includes Early and Old Occitan. Middle Occitan is sometimes included in Old Occitan, sometimes in Modern Occitan. As the term occitanus appeared around the year 1300, Old Occitan is referred to as "Romance" (Occitan: romans ) or "Provençal" (Occitan: proensals ) in medieval texts.
7-417: A razo ( Old Occitan [raˈzu] , literally "cause", "reason") was a short piece of Occitan prose detailing the circumstances of a troubadour composition. A razo normally introduced an individual poem, acting as a prose preface and explanation; it might, however, share some of the characteristics of a vida (a biography of a troubadour, describing his origins, his loves, and his works) and
14-500: Is clear that assertions in the razos are simply deduced from literal readings of details in the poems. Most of the surviving razo corpus is the work of Uc de Saint Circ , composed in Italy between 1227 and 1230. In one case, a manuscript from Bergamo , there is an explanatory rubric preceding the Occitan partimen Si paradis et enfernz son aital by Girard Cavalaz and Aycart del Fossat
21-710: Is in Latin . Old Occitan Among the earliest records of Occitan are the Tomida femina , the Boecis and the Cançó de Santa Fe . Old Occitan, the language used by the troubadours , was the first Romance language with a literary corpus and had an enormous influence on the development of lyric poetry in other European languages. The interpunct was a feature of its orthography and survives today in Catalan and Gascon . The official language of
28-796: The basic sound system can be summarised as follows: Notes: Old Occitan is a non-standardised language regarding its spelling, meaning that different graphemic signs can represent one sound and vice versa. For example: Some notable characteristics of Old Occitan: Bela Domna·l vostre cors gens E·lh vostre bel olh m'an conquis, E·l doutz esgartz e lo clars vis, E·l vostre bels essenhamens, Que, can be m'en pren esmansa, De beutat no·us trob egansa: La genser etz c'om posc'e·l mon chauzir, O no·i vei clar dels olhs ab que·us remir. O pretty lady, all your grace and eyes of beauty conquered me, sweet glance and brightness of your face and all your nature has to tell so if I make an appraisal I find no one like in beauty: most pleasing to be found in all
35-458: The boundary between the two genres was never sharp. In the chansonniers , the manuscript collections of medieval troubadour poetry, some poems are accompanied by a prose explanation whose purpose is to give the reason why the poem was composed. These texts are occasionally based on independent sources. To that extent, they supplement the vidas in the same manuscripts and are useful to modern literary and historical researchers. Often, however, it
42-560: The sovereign principality of the Viscounty of Béarn was the local vernacular Bearnès dialect of Old Occitan. It was the spoken language of law courts and of business and it was the written language of customary law. Although vernacular languages were increasingly preferred to Latin in western Europe in the late Middle Ages, the status of Occitan in Béarn was unusual because its use was required by law: "lawyers will draft their petitions and pleas in
49-445: The vernacular language of the present country, both in speech and in writing". Old Catalan and Old Occitan diverged between the 11th and the 14th centuries. Catalan never underwent the shift from /u/ to /y/ or the shift from /o/ to /u/ (except in unstressed syllables in some dialects) and so had diverged phonologically before those changes affected Old Occitan. Old Occitan changed and evolved somewhat during its history, but
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