Paysage de Mirèio

Frèdèric Mistral's 1859 Mirèio, describing life in Provence, contains a number of landscape descriptions, the study of which allows the reader to perceive its ideological undercurrents. Through textual analysis and references to various definitions of allegory as well as through a reflection on the response of Occitan readers (as compared to French readers), a political meaning appears. However, even though at times a political discourse may be detected, it never asserts itself. The ideological scope is instead consistently obscured and minimized. The landscape in Mirèio share an æsthetic strategy more than an ideological one. (In French) (CP)