Grains of Gold brings together for the first time an extensive selection of Occitan literature with English translations from the tenth to the twenty-first centuries.

Occitan is a Romance language spoken in southern and south-central France, the Val d’Aran in north-eastern Spain, and a small part of north-western Italy. For many, it is associated with the troubadours, composers of courtly lyric poetry in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

This anthology offers something new. Alongside troubadour and other medieval texts, Grains of Gold introduces the English-speaking reader to the rich body of Occitan literature from the middle ages to the present day, covering the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and French Revolution, Romanticism, Frédéric Mistral and the Félibrige – the first organised revival of Occitan – Modernism and twentieth-century Occitanism, as well as the work of twentieth- and twenty-first century writers.

Grains of Gold offers English-speaking readers – students, academics, lovers of southern France – a unique opportunity see Occitan literature within the context of European and world culture.