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Article dans une revue Language and History Année : 2023

Homme & femme in the Dictionnaire universel

Résumé

The seventeenth century was a period of transition across Europe as societal outlooks changed from the renaissance mindset to the modern. It is the foundation of the siècle des lumières with the beginnings of the great academies and network of literary and scientific correspondence that formed the Republic of letters. In France, it is a period of relative calm after the violence of the religious wars and a period of expansion of the economy. It corresponds particularly to the reign of Louis XVI, the Sun King and the centralization of power, and knowledge networks, around Paris and Versailles. Many of the great names that epitomise this period, Molière, Descartes, were essentially men of the seventeenth century, or rather a long eighteenth century that begins with Louis’s accession to the throne in 1643 and ends with the French revolution when the lights of tolerance were abruptly extinguished and Europe fell once again into war. The Dictionnaire universel, henceforth DU, of Antoine Furetière in its various editions is an interesting means to access attitudes and knowledge networks in France as being the first truly encyclopaedic dictionary in Europe. Between 1690 and 1727, it went through five different editions with three different editors: Antoine Furetière, the creator of the DU; Henri Basnage de Beauval who produced the first fully revised edition; Jean-Baptiste Brutel de la Rivière, who was asked to take on the revisions following the death of Basnage in 1710. The fact that we have two major revisions makes it particularly interesting as a means to look at how men and women are treated in the dictionary in terms of the entries for ‘femme’ and ‘homme’, in terms of who is cited in the dictionary and finally through a concordance to get an overall picture of usage in the dictionary.
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halshs-04249403, version 1 (19-10-2023)

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  • HAL Id : halshs-04249403 , version 1

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Geoffrey Clive Williams. Homme & femme in the Dictionnaire universel. Language and History, In press. ⟨halshs-04249403⟩
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Dernière date de mise à jour le 28/04/2024
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