Mirèio

Published in 1859 to great fanfare from French literary society, Mir?io was the first of four long narrative poems written by the French author Fr?d?ric Mistral. Composed in Occitan, a regional language spoken in southern France, Mir?io arose out of the milieu of the F?librige, a cultural movement centered around Mistral and his compatriots who championed the use of the Occitan language. Rich with references to local Proven?al culture and geography, Mir?io recounts the joys and sorrows of two young lovers: the titular Mir?io, daughter of a rich farmer, and Vincen, a poor basket weaver. Though the two fall madly in love, they find themselves separated by social class and the disapproving attitude of Mir?io's parents. In part thanks to Mir?io, Mistral went on to win the 1904 Nobel Prize in Literature, celebrated by the Nobel Committee for his poetry and his work as a Proven?al philologist. Mir?io was widely translated, and was also adapted into the French-language opera Mireille by Charles Gounod. Mir?io remains a celebrated depiction of Proven?al culture to this day. This Standard Ebooks edition of Mir?io augments Harriet Waters Preston's unannotated 1890 translation with the annotations from her first translation published in 1872.