Frédéric Mistral (1830-1914) was without a doubt the greatest modern Provençal poet and the foremost champion of his native Provence, the guiding spirit of a group of latter-day troubadours who revived and refined the language of Southern France as a literary medium. For this achievement and for his own poetry, Mistral was awarded the Nobel prize in 1904––characteristically, he gave the prize money to a folklore museum he had founded in Arles.…