di Jean-François Chanet
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 2 (1998), p. 61
The Félibrige, formed in 1854 to "keep Provence’s language and tradition alive" has developed late, since 1894, in Cantal, southern region of Auvergne but northern boundary of the provençal French. The geographic and social features of this rural region explain this delay as well as the variety of the component parts that the félibres had to synthetize. Torn between the protection of local patois and country traditions, the adoption of Mistral’s linguistic and literary model and the sociocultural influence of the cantalian emigrés in Spain, and particularly in Paris, the cantalian félibres linked together their own regionalistic sentiment and aspirations and the general stream of the french nationalistic revival.