Dictionaries of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

THE DICTIONARIES WHICH FOUNDED THE FRENCH LANGUAGE

With the support of the Centre National des Lettres.

This Corpus of the dictionaries of the 16th and 17th centuries contains the ten most important dictionaries published in those two centuries. Each of them contributed, in its own way, to building up French lexicography and language.
This data-base is presented in arborescent form, allowing access at any moment to any particular dictionary, to the chosen entry and easy passage from one dictionary to another.
Beyond full-text searches, cross-searches can be made in the following fields : - one or several dictionaries, - entry, and sub-entry, - grammatical categories, - signs of domain or usage, - definition of a word, - entire article. Indices are given for all fields.
This database of dictionaries modifies and modernizes research on language history and lexicography.

Three kinds of book constitute this dictionary database:
- bilingual dictionaries, Latin-French (Estienne and Nicot) or English-French (Cotgrave)
- the dictionaries of Gilles Ménage (1650 and 1694), which make up the second category by themselves; the author gathered a vast quantity of notes related to the presumed origins of the French language (regional and vernacular languages).
- dictionaries that played a part in establishing the reputation of the French language, supporting a linguistic policy which aimed to give world-wide influence to French culture: Richelet, Furetière, the French Academy and Thomas Corneille, each in its own way.

CONTENTS

• Dictionnaire françois-latin by Robert Estienne, Paris, 1549
• Thresor de la langue françoyse, tant ancienne que moderne by Jean Nicot, Paris, 1606
• A Dictionarie of the french and english tongues by Randle Cotgrave, London, 1611
• Les Origines de la langue françoise by Gilles Ménage, Paris, 1650
• Dictionnaire françois by Pierre Richelet, Genève, 1680
• Essai d’un dictionaire universel by Antoine Furetière, Amsterdam, 1687
• Dictionaire universel by Antoine Furetière, La Haye et Rotterdam, 1690
• Dictionnaire étymologique ou Origines de la langue françoise by Gilles Ménage, Paris, 1694
• Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie françoise dedié au Roy, Paris, 1694
• Le Dictionnaire des Arts et des Sciences by Thomas Corneille, Paris, 1694

FIELDS OF INTEREST

Science of dictionaries, lexicography, history, linguistic history, literature

EDITORIAL TEAM

Author of the databases: Claude Blum
With the collaboration of :
Ahmed Benalioua (IRHT, Paris); Philippe Derendinger (University of Basel); Patrick Gilbert (CESR, Tours); Laurent Leidwanger (IRHT, Paris); Laurence Plazenet (University of Paris-Sorbonne); François Roudaut (University of Montpellier III); Chantal Wionet (University of Avignon and METADIF, CNRS)