Mistral, Frédéric (frādārēk` mēsträl`), 1830–1914, French Provençal poet. With Théodore Aubanel he was one of the seven founders (1854) of the Félibrige, an organization to promote Provençal as a literary language (see Provençal literature Provençal literature, vernacular literature of S France. Provençal, or Occitan, as the language is now often called, appears to have been the first vernacular tongue used in French commerce and literature.
..... Click the link for more information. ). He was the leader of the movement and was recognized as its greatest poet. Besides many short poems he wrote four verse romances, notably Mirèio (1859, tr. 1867). He published a Provençal dictionary (1878–86) and wrote memoirs (tr. 1907). His verse is characterized rather by ease and beauty of language than by power of thought. He shared with Echegaray the 1904 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Bibliography

See his memoirs, tr. by G. Wickes (1986); studies by C. A. Downer (1901), R. Aldington (1960), and T. Edwards (1965).

Mistral, Frédéric

Frédéric Mistral, etching, 1864

(credit: Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum; photograph, J.R. Freeman & Co. Ltd.)

(born Sept. 8, 1830, Maillane, France—died March 25, 1914, Maillane) French poet. A leader of the 19th-century revival of Provençal, Mistral cofounded the Félibrige, an influential association for maintaining the customs and language of Provence and later the whole of southern France. He devoted 20 years to creating a scholarly dictionary of Provençal. His literary output includes lyrics; short stories; Memoirs of Mistral (1906), his best-known work; and long narrative poems, including Mirèio (1859) and The Song of the Rhône (1897), his two greatest works. He shared the 1904 Nobel Prize for Literature with José Echegaray.