REVIEW Bec, Pierre. Le Siècle d'or de la poésie gasconne (1550 - 1650): anthologie bilingue. Coll. Architecture du Verbe. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. 1997. Pp. 430. It is hardly surprising that Pierre Bec, a Gascon himself, should offer the world ofOccitan studies an anthology ofGascon poetry written between c. 1 550 and 1 650. The richness ofthis Baroque poetry, both in quantity and diversity, fullyjustifies the ideaofthispublication, all the more so since it is an area which has been neglected in the past. It is also a witness to the constitution ofthe myth ofa Gascon culture alongside that ofa nation ofsoldiers and adventurers, leading to a tradition which is wellfounded in French literature. Bee begins his introduction with fundamentals, and, first, the place of Gascon within Occitan. He comments on the fact that there is no tradition oftroubadourGascon, apart from the plurilingueJc.vîwîofRaimbaut de Vaqueiras. But, in any case, this was a conscious attempt to introduce foreign languages and it proves the universality ofthe koine which dominates lyric poetry. What is ofmore interest is the fact that Gascon should have been included alongside Italian, French and Gallego-Portuguese and here Bee discusses the remark made in the Mounier version ofthe Leys d'Amor, where Gascon is qualified as lengatge estranh alongside French. English etc. As Bee suggests, the motivation maycome more fromMolinier and his purist tendencies than from the original author ofthe Lt'y.v, and it will be instructive to compare this remark with those in other versions of the Leys, once they are available. The two entities which constitute the Gascon geo-linguistic space arc Beam and Gascony itself, the latter being open to influences from Toulouse, so that the language of administration is close to that of its neighbor. With the move into the Renaissance, the process ofgallicization has begun in Gascony, whereas Beam remains faithful to its linguistic origins . Curiously, then, underthe influence ofthe Pleiade, there was revival 53 REVIEW ofinterest in the useofGascon specifically in thecontext ofcomposition, in orderto rival the poetry ofMarat and Ronsard, and as a reaction to the fact thatthere were Gascons writing in French. In this it is mirroring the efforts ofits cousins in Provence and, with them, is distinct in its ambitions from the Languedoc poets, who have no sense ofaglobal entity in language but, rather, tend to use the dialect oftheirown city. Ofthe twelve poets presented in this anthology, only twoare from Beam, the restoriginating in Armagnac and its region, whose language is considered to be the most pure. Ifthere is a questione della lingua, it is presentonly atthe level ofthe lexicon. The genres, represented liberally in this anthology, tend to coincide with particular periods: the first, before Goudouli, is dominated by the eclogue and, to a degree, by the epic. It is only in the second period that the Ronsardian love sonnet occurs with poets like Du Pré. With Goudouli, in the third period, comes the classical period with odes and the royal song, which experiences an uncertain fortune but becomes the crowning glory ofthe Jeux Floraux until 1650. The above analysis gives a flavor ofthe solid introduction to the poetry which follows and rightly so, since this is an area into which few scholars will have strayed. Each groupofpoems, beginning with those of Pey de Garros ( 1 525/30- 1 58 1 ), is introduced by three or four pages of the poet's biography and an appreciation ofhis works. There are facing translations and notes atthe footofthe page. A glossary and bibliography follow the texts. The main impression with which the readeris left, uponconcluding a reading ofthis poetry, is that ofvariety, awareness ofstyle, and an ability torecastFrench and Italian models in amode more in tune with the language used. Butthere is also aconsciousnessofPetrarchian influence, throughwhich, asPierreBee says,knowledgeofthetroubadours isbrought back from Italy, albeit through French. This is an inviting book, combining, as itdoes, the passion ofthe native with refined scholarship and objectivity ofthought. The choice of 54 REVIEW poets and poems (some ofthem extracts) isjudicious. The reward for readers will be that they are left with a clear idea ofa period and a literature which, up till now, has been unjustly neglected. Peter...