the literature of the Bretons (who inhabit the historic province of Brittany in France) in the Breton language.
The oldest monuments of Breton literature, glosses to texts of Latin grammarians and poets, are from the eighth to the 11th centuries. The oral legends of the King Arthur cycle and of the knights of the Round Table have not been preserved, and an idea of them can be obtained only through the French lais (short musical pieces accompanied by songs and gestures) and the Round Table novels of Robert de Borron and Chrétien de Troyes. Nor are there written records of the fabliaux (fables, fairy tales, parables) of the early Middle Ages. The growing influence of French literature led to a departure from the tradition of Breton literature, and only mystical and religious works of the 13th and 14th centuries have been preserved (Life of Saint Nonn, for example).
The annexation of Brittany by France in 1532 led to the final assimilation of Brittany’s ruling classes to the French language; however, the peasantry and the urban lower classes continued to speak their native language. In the 16th century, 150 dramas and mysteries on biblical and epic subjects in the Breton language were written and staged in local theaters. In the 17th century, representatives of the lower clergy, such as Michel Le Nobletz and Julien Maunoir, created songs and sermons that became symbols of struggle against absolutism. The popular poetry of this period abounds in lyricism and fantasy. The decline of Breton literature in the following period is linked to the liquidation of the feudal division and the establishment of the absolutist regime. In the 19th century T. H. de La Villemarqué attempted to revive Breton songs (the collection Baraz Breiz, or Folk Songs of the Ancient Bretons, 1839). In the 20th century Jaffrenou-Taldir tried to revive Breton lyric poetry, and Le Bayon, Breton drama.