Restoring the Feminine to Occitan Literature

This project fits within the current debate on regional and minority languages in the European Union (Occitan is the language traditionally spoken in the south of France). It is also meant to contribute to the existing work on Occitan women writers. To date, such work has focused mainly on medieval poetry. This project will study poetry by four Occitan women writers in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, at a time when Occitan was considered to be a mere patois. These almost unknown women are: Claude Duclos / Filàdelfa de Yerda (1871- 1952), Julienne Fraysse-Séguret / Calelhon (1892-1981), Jeanne Barthès / Clardeluno (1898-1972), and Henriette Dibon / Farfantello (1902-1989). Active in the promotion of Occitan, they shared a similar passion for their native region, and their texts reflect, in diverse ways, their quest for a vibrant Occitan identity. My work will include: a) the collection of texts written by these women (some are to be consulted in archives); b) a socio-historical analysis of the cultural environment within which these women produced their work, looking specifically at their participation in various associations and at their bilingualism (with French enjoying a more prestigious status than Occitan); c) a textual analysis of these women`s poetry, with special emphasis on the ideological content of landscape descriptions as well as on how these women`s literary endeavors are shaped by their contact with individuals, groups, and cultures that they identify as "other." My overall objective, in addition to rescuing these women`s texts from oblivion, is to historicize them both by analyzing them from a gendered perspective and by placing them within the framework of minority discourse, two fields of research that are currently generating increased attention and challenging debates. The most recent developments in Occitan studies point to promising investigation in various areas of minority discourse; bringing in a gendered component will help to enrich such work.