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