Corpus of French Grammars of the Seventeenth Century
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The Corpus des grammaires françaises du XVIIe siècle contains the key French grammars from the classical age. In addition to the interest their authors show for the French language, these works reflect very different projects: to stabilize the common language by aligning it with its “best” variety, to formulate “general” rules of the “art of speaking” from French (and a few other languages), and to help foreigners (particularly the English and Flemish) learn French.
The texts are written in French but employ other languages too (Masset’s Acheminement is translated into Latin, La Grue’s makes extensive use of Flemish, and Mauger’s makes use of English). They can take different forms: didactic treatises, dialogs, vocabulary lists, etc. Some of these may be used bidirectionally: Mauger’s grammar allows a native English speaker to learn French, but also a native French speaker to learn English. Reproduction of these texts was intended to be as faithful as possible to the originals.
To explore these texts, the Corpus des grammaires françaises du XVIIe siècle provides teachers, researchers, and students with numerous search tools: full-text search, an encyclopedia of authors (five categories), titles of works (three categories), and a compendium of examples and quotations. It also allows users to build a corpus and extract and export results.
CONTENTS
Jean Masset, Exact et tres-facile acheminement à la langue françoise, 1606
Charles Maupas, Grammaire et syntaxe françoise, 1618 [1607]
Antoine Oudin, Grammaire françoise rapportée au langage du temps, 1640 [1632]
Claude Mauger, French Grammar with additions, 1684 [1653]
Thomas de La Grue, La vraye Introduction à la Langue françoise, 1669 [avant 1655]
Claude Irson, Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre facilement les principes et la pureté de la langue française, 1662 [1656]
Laurent Chiflet, Essay d’une parfaite Grammaire de la langue françoise, 1659
Antoine Arnauld & Claude Lancelot, Grammaire Générale et Raisonnée, 1676 [1660]
Denis Vairasse d’Allais, Grammaire Méthodique contenant en abrégé les Principes de cet art et les règles les plus nécessaires à la langue française, 1681
Louis de Courcillon de Dangeau, Opuscules sur la grammaire, 1694
Pierre de La Touche, L’art de bien parler françois (2 vol.), 1730 [1696]
RESEARCH FIELDS
History of the language, grammar, linguistic codes, history of linguistic theories, translation, sociolinguistic variations, literature.
EDITORIAL TEAM
Under the direction of Bernard Colombat (université de Paris) and Jean-Marie Fournier (université Sorbonne Nouvelle) : Susan Baddeley (université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines) ; Bérengère Bouard (université de Lorraine) ; Nathalie Fournier (Université Lumière Lyon 2) ; Florence Lefeuvre (université Sorbonne Nouvelle) ; Odile Leclercq (Sorbonne Université) ; Francine Mazière (Université Sorbonne Paris Nord) ; Valérie Raby † (université Sorbonne Nouvelle) ; Christophe Rey (CY Cergy Paris Université) ; Serge Vlassov (université de Saint-Pétersbourg) ; Chantal Wionet (Avignon Université).
With the collaboration of Jan Noordegraaf (université d’Amsterdam) ; Cendrine Pagani-Naudet (Université Côte d’Azur).