Corpus of Remarks and Treatises on the French Language (eighteenth century)

The Corpus des remarques et des traités sur la langue française (XVIIIe siècle) shows how the genre of observations or reflections on language evolved after appearing in France in the mid-seventeenth century. The lasting influence of the founding text of the genre, Vaugelas’s Remarques sur la langue françoise, first published in 1647, is shown by way of the new edition of 1738, which contains notes by Thomas Corneille and Olivier Patru, as well as Vaugelas’s Nouvelles Remarques, rightly identified as “dross from his first Remarques.” The appetite for commentaries on the use of “classical” authors also continues in the Remarques sur la langue françoise by the Abbé d’Olivet, which brings together three “opuscules”: “Remarques sur Racine,” a prosody, and essays on grammar. The influence of the genre is not limited to France: while modernizing the method of the “remarqueurs,” Prémontval perpetuates the observational format in an attempt to escape the contagion of bad usage common in Berlin.

But the genre also diversified in the eighteenth century. We observe a series of volumes devoted to regionalisms, a parameter relatively unstudied by Vaugelas (Desgrouais, Dubois de Launay, Mauvillon). The desire to discern “proper usage” and resolve cases of “questionable usage” continues in other forms, including dictionaries (Desfontaines) and linguistic periodicals (Domergue). Even Arnauld, co-author of the famous Grammaire générale et raisonnée de Port-Royal, felt it necessary to offer reflections on the maxim “that usage is the measuring stick and tyrant of living languages.”

The corpus is an essential resource for specialists in eighteenth-century language and literature as well as for all those interested in the history of French, its codification, and standardization. The corpus offers many tools for exploring texts: full-text search; an encyclopedia of authors, titles of works, examples and quotations—with the ability to build a corpus and extract and export results.

CONTENTS

Antoine Arnauld, Regles pour discerner les bonnes et les mauvaises critiques des traductions de l’Ecriture-Sainte en François Pour ce qui regarde la Langue, Paris, 1707

Pierre-François Guyot Desfontaines, Dictionaire néologique a l’usage des beaux esprits du siécle, Paris, 1726

Jean Desgrouais, Les Gasconismes corrigés, Toulouse, 1766

François Urbain Domergue, Journal de la langue françoise, soit exacte, soit ornée, Lyon, Paris, 1784-1795

Henri Dubois de Launay, Remarques sur la langue françoise, a l’usage de la jeunesse de Lorraine, Paris, 1775

Éléazar de Mauvillon, Remarques sur les germanismes. Ouvrage utile aux Allemands, aux François, et aux Hollandois, &c., Amsterdam , 1753-1754, 2 volumes

Pierre-Joseph Thoulier d’Olivet, Remarques sur la langue françoise. Par M. l'Abbé d'Olivet, Paris, 1767

André Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval, Préservatif contre la corruption de la langue françoise, Berlin, 1761, 2 volumes

Claude Favre de Vaugelas, Remarques de M. de Vaugelas sur la langue françoise, Avec des Notes de Messieurs Patru & T. Corneille, Paris, 1738, 3 volumes

RESEARCH FIELDS

History of the language, grammar, linguistic codes, history of linguistic theories, translation, sociolinguistic variations, literature.

EDITORIAL TEAM

Under the direction of  Wendy Ayres-Bennett (université de Cambridge) : Valentina Bisconti (université de Picardie Jules Verne) ; Bernard Colombat (université de Paris) ; Chris Coski (université d’Ohio) ; Sybille Große (université de Heidelberg) ; Carita Klippi (université de Tampere) ; Mairi McLaughlin (université de Californie, Berkeley) ; Agnès Steuckardt (université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3) ; Olivia Walsh (université de Nottingham) ; Valerie Worth (université d’Oxford).