| Summary: | In 1595, the posthumous collection of the Provencal writer Louis Bellaud was published. The first book printed in Marseille, its publication is linked to the very peculiar political context of the short period of secession of the Phocaean city during a period of religious conflict. The work, composed mainly of sonnets in the Occitan language, is now considered a major reference in the Baroque Occitan literary corpus. Without the effort of another poet, Pierre Paul, and without the establishment of a publishing house by the two new masters of the city: Louis d'Aix and Charles de Casaulx, this text certainly would never have seen the light of day.Contained within the pages of this book, some thirty plays in Occitan, French, as well as Latin, Castilian and Italian (paeans, sonnets, quatrains, preface) form a singular ensemble revealing the political, literary and linguistic stakes associated with this publication. In this paper, we will focus on these plays, their dedicators, their authors, and the languages used. We will attempt to reveal how a whole network (indeed, a whole power struggle) organized itself around Bellaud’s work that would leave a mark on the Provencal literary Renaissance of this period.
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