Claude Favre de Vaugelas, born in Savoy in 1585 and one of the founder members of the French Academy, is best known for his Remarques sur la langue française (1647) in which he sets out good usage of French. In this study, Wendy Ayres-Bennett analyses the development of Vaugelas's thinking on French from the only early extant manuscript of the Remarques to the final text, and compares this with Vaugelas's own usage in his translations of Fonseca's Lenten Sermons (1615) and Quintus Curtius Rufus's Life of Alexander, published in two different posthumous versions (1653, 1659). Finally, the impact of the Remarques on the subsequent history of French and on its codification is explored, and the popularity of the work is explained by situating it within its historical and socio-cultural context.
This book, originally published in paperback in 1987 under the ISBN 978-0-947623-13-5, was made Open Access in 2024 as part of the MHRA Revivals programme.
Wendy Ayres-Bennett is Reader in French Philology and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge.
Chapter 1. The Arsenal Manuscript. Chapter 2. Vaugelas's Theory of Language: Usage and Reason in the Remarques. Chapter 3. Presentation and Terminology. Chapter 4. Vaugelas's Originality: Sources for the Remarques. Chapter 5. The Relationship between the Spoken and Written Registers in the Remarques and the Observations on Orthography and Pronunciation. Chapter 6. Inflectional Morphology. Chapter 7. Syntax. Chapter 8. Vocabulary and Meaning. Chapter 9. Grammar and Style: Vaugelas's Ideals for Language Usage.
Chapter 10. Grammar and Translation: The Development of Vaugelas's Theory of Translation. Chapter 11. The Fonseca Translation (1615). Chapter 12. The Quints Curtis Translation (1653, 1659).
In this analysis of Vaugelas's work, three major and interrelated perspectives have been adopted - the historical, the linguistic, and the sociolinguistic. Here I want to draw together the major conclusions resulting from each approach. and suggest what is, in my view, the value of such a study of Vaugelas. Three main historical questions have guided the analysis. Firstly, what development can be discerned in Vaugelas's ideas on language and the usage of French? Secondly, what is his position in the history of grammatical or linguistic treatises? Thirdly, what is his influence and lasting effect on the writing of works on language and on the development of the French language?
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Bibliography entry:
Ayres-Bennett, Wendy, Vaugelas and the Development of the French Language, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 23 (MHRA, 1987)
First footnote reference:35 Wendy Ayres-Bennett, Vaugelas and the Development of the French Language, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 23 (MHRA, 1987), p. 21.
Subsequent footnote reference:37 Ayres-Bennett, p. 47.
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