Aubanel, Théodore

Born Mar. 26, 1829, in Avignon; died there Oct. 31, 1886. Provençal writer.

Aubanel, together with F. Mistral and J. Roumanille, founded (1854) the Félibrige movement. Aubanel’s lyric poetry combines a highly prosaic style with the Parnassians’ cult of poetic form. The main theme of his early lyrics, such as his collection The Half-open Pomegranate (1860), is the sad story of his platonic love, which is the cause of his romantic suffering. In his mature poems (the collection Daughters of Avignon, 1886, which resulted in his persecution by the church), moral severity is combined with delight in the unruly character of the flesh. As early as the 1860’s, Aubanel’s change in poetic disposition led him to break with the major poets of the Félibrige and with the patriarchal milieu of southern France that had been sustaining the literature of the Provençal renaissance.

Aubanel wrote three dramas in verse: The Bread of Sin (written 1863, staged 1878, published 1882), The Abduction (published 1928), and The Shepherd (published 1935, complete edition 1944).