Breton oral literature and the problems it poses for historians

In this article, we analyse all the problems that Britton oral literature s ets to historians. Until the XVIIth century at least, neither the authors, nor the public of Britton ballads were specifically popular. In the religio us field in particular, reciprocal influences between ballads and written t exts were not an exception. On the other hand, as far as the numerous balla ds which record a real fact, an event or a news item, are concerned, the in fluence of written models must have been not existent and the creation was autonomous. We know the date of about thirty ballads that record a real fac t between the fourteenth and eighteenth century. We think possible the fact that some ballads have been transmitted since the tenth or thirteenth cent ury. The last past of the article resumes the works using the oral Briton l iterature in social and cultural history about the seventeenth and eighteen th centuries.