Free shipping on orders over $99
The Place of Words

The Place of Words

The Académie Française and Its Dictionary During an Age of Revolution

by Michael P. Fitzsimmons
Hardback
Publication Date: 13/12/2017

Share This Book:

30%
OFF
RRP  $263.00

RRP means 'Recommended Retail Price' and is the price our supplier recommends to retailers that the product be offered for sale. It does not necessarily mean the product has been offered or sold at the RRP by us or anyone else.

$184.25
or 4 easy payments of $46.06 with
afterpay
This item qualifies your order for FREE DELIVERY
As the tricolor rose over revolutionary France, language, with its ability to define ideals and allegiances, was both a threat to authority and weapon to be wielded. In the early years of the Republic, the Acad�mie Fran�aise, the royal body responsible for the French language, was suppressed by the National Convention at the urging of the Abb� Gr�goire and the artist Jacques-Louis David. However, by 1795, the National Convention recognized that language could be used to its advantage, leading it to commission a fifth edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Acad�mie fran�aise, which would unquestionably become the most controversial edition in the Acad�mie's history.

The National Convention expected this dictionary to champion the ideals of Revolution and Republic, but when it appeared three years later it did quite the opposite. Instead, the fifth edition virtually ignored the Revolution and the linguistic innovations that had transformed the French language, even omitting two of the most famous and enduring neologisms spawned by the Revolution--ancien r�gime and Terror. Present-tense definitions of abolished institutions and anachronistic values dominated the work and the Revolution was consigned to a brief and hastily-prepared supplement at the end of the second volume. Because of its failure to capture the current state of the French language, most contemporaries judged it harshly, and its deficiencies led the Parisian publisher Nicolas Moutardier to publish a competing dictionary in 1802. The dictionary became the focus of protracted litigation that Napoleon Bonaparte's government increasingly used to assert its control over language. Indeed, Bonaparte met personally with the commission of the Institut National (the republican successor to the Acad�mie) and made clear his desire that the new edition not contain revolutionary neologisms. Eager to see the new edition appear, the Bonapartist regime committed financial resources and established a timetable for its completion within five years. However, it was only in 1835, after the fall of Bonaparte and the Bourbons, that the sixth edition would appear.

Although the Acad�mie was one of the most prominent institutions under the Old Regime, scholarship on the Acad�mie remains largely neglected. Drawing on previously untapped sources in the Archives de l'Institut and Archives Nationales, The Place of Words is the first book-length study of the controversial fifth edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Acad�mie fran�aise. Spanning more than half a century of changing regimes, this study provides unique insight into the ways in which each government, from the publication of the fourth edition in 1762 to the sixth in 1835, viewed the role of language as an instrument of control.

ISBN:
9780190644536
9780190644536
Category:
European history
Format:
Hardback
Publication Date:
13-12-2017
Language:
English
Publisher:
Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Country of origin:
United States
Dimensions (mm):
155x239x25.4mm
Weight:
0.5kg

This title is in stock with our Australian supplier and should arrive at our Sydney warehouse within 1 - 2 weeks of you placing an order.

Once received into our warehouse we will despatch it to you with a Shipping Notification which includes online tracking.

Please check the estimated delivery times below for your region, for after your order is despatched from our warehouse:

ACT Metro: 2 working days
NSW Metro: 2 working days
NSW Rural: 2-3 working days
NSW Remote: 2-5 working days
NT Metro: 3-6 working days
NT Remote: 4-10 working days
QLD Metro: 2-4 working days
QLD Rural: 2-5 working days
QLD Remote: 2-7 working days
SA Metro: 2-5 working days
SA Rural: 3-6 working days
SA Remote: 3-7 working days
TAS Metro: 3-6 working days
TAS Rural: 3-6 working days
VIC Metro: 2-3 working days
VIC Rural: 2-4 working days
VIC Remote: 2-5 working days
WA Metro: 3-6 working days
WA Rural: 4-8 working days
WA Remote: 4-12 working days

Reviews

Be the first to review The Place of Words.