popular in Italy and Spain when the Albigeois crusade devastated
the south of France and scattered the troubadours abroad or forced them
to seek other means of livelihood. The earliest lyric poetry of Italy is
Provencal in all but language; almost as much may be said of Portugal
and Galicia; Catalonian troubadours continued to write in Provencal
until the fourteenth century. The lyric poetry of the "trouveres" in
Northern France was deeply influenced both in form and spirit by
troubadour poetry, and traces of this influence are perceptible even in [2]
early middle-English lyrics. Finally, the German minnesingers knew and
appreciated troubadour lyrics, and imitations or even translations of
Provencal poems may be found in Heinrich von Morungen, Friedrich von
Hausen, and many others. Hence the poetry of the troubadours is a
subject of first-rate importance to the student of comparative
literature.

The northern limit of the Provencal language formed a line starting from
the Pointe de Grave at the mouth of the Gironde, passing through
Lesparre, Bordeaux, Libourne, Perigueux, rising northward to Nontron, la
Rochefoucauld, Confolens, Bellac, then turning eastward to Gueret and
Montlucon; it then went south-east to Clermont-Ferrand, Boen, Saint
Georges, Saint Sauveur near Annonay. The Dauphine above Grenoble, most
of the Franche-Comte, French Switzerland and Savoy, are regarded as a
separate linguistic group known as Franco-Provencal, for the reason that
the dialects of that district display characteristics common to both
French and Provencal.[1] On the south-west, Catalonia, Valencia and the
Balearic Isles must also be included in the Provencal region. As
concerns the Northern limit, it must not be regarded as a definite line
of demarcation between the langue d'oil or the Northern French dialects
and the langue d'oc or Provencal. The boundary is, of course, determined
by noting the points at which certain linguistic features peculiar to
Provencal cease and are replaced by the characteristics of Northern [3]
French. Such a characteristic, for instance, is the Latin tonic _a_
before a single consonant, and not preceded by a palatal consonant,
which remains in Provencal but becomes _e_ in French; Latin cant_a_re
becomes chant_a_r in Provencal but chant_e_r in French. But north and
south of the boundary thus determined there was, in the absence of any
great mountain range or definite geographical line of demarcation, an