Claude Favre de Vaugelas: Remarques Sur La Langue Francoise

Claude Favre de Vaugelas's Remarks on the French Language unravels the linguistic attitudes and socio-cultural ideology of the dominate class in seventeenth-century France. Elite society was subject to a strict code of decorum, part of which was the art of expressing oneself correctly. Vaugelas underlines the superiority of the oral over the written language, the breach of the existing literary tradition and the refusal of synchronic variation. This book is the first attempt to offer a critical edition of Vaugelas's work establishing the French norm, with detailed commentaries and numerous citations culled from the literature of the time. This edition follows the elaboration of the author's ideas and confronts his opinions with the reality of the language of his time. French text.