volution: Le texte
dialectal
de la pe?
Cult of the Nation in France
119. These assertions are based on Gregory S. Brown, "Do Plays Make Revolu- tions? " paper presented to the Society for French Historical Studies, Washing- ton, D. C. , March, 1999.
120. L. W. B. Brockliss, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Cultural History (Oxford, 1987), 164, 166. The same was true of the ballets that accompanied the plays, and the long recited poems, called se? natus-consultus, which sometimes replaced them.
121. Titles included "La France victorieuse sous Louis le Grand," "Le grand monarque," "Le ge? nie franc? ais ou les fe^tes franc? aises," and "Le tableau de la gloire trace? d'apre`s les fastes du peuple franc? ais. " See the discussion in Boe? s, 26-44.
122. Melvin Edelstein, La Feuille villageoise: Communication et modernisation dans les re? gions rurales pendant la Re? volution (Paris, 1977), 68, 74. In general on the revolutionary press, see the excellent synthesis of Jeremy Popkin, Revolution- ary News: The Press in France, 1789-1799 (Durham, N. C. , 1990).
123. Edelstein, 74; see Cerutti's "Avis a tous les souscripteurs de 'La Feuille villageoise,'" reprinted in de Certeau et al. , Une politique de la langue, 285-87.
124. Popkin, Revolutionary News, 150.
Notes to Pages 162-165 273
? Notes to Pages 162-165
274
Notes to Pages 167-171
? 125.
126. 127. 128.
1. 2. 3.
4.
This description is taken from Schama, Citizens (see Ch. 2, n. 60), 831-36. The fundamental work on the revolutionary festivals is Ozouf, La fe^te re? volutionnaire. Condorcet is quoted in Labarrie`re, "De la vertu," 67. Reimpression de l'ancien Moniteur, 803.
Ozouf, La fe^te, 446-53. Ibid. , 441-74.
6. National Language
On the fe^te de la Fe? de? ration, see Ozouf, La fe^te re? volutionnaire (see Intro. , n. 81), 59-101.
Jean-Claude Meyer, La vie religieuse en Haute-Garonne sous la Re? volution (1789-1801) (Toulouse, 1982), 59,77.
Antoine-Hyacinthe Sermet, Discours prounounc? at dabant la legiou de Sant- Ginest, Pel. R. P. Sermet, Exproubincial des Carme? s Descausse? s, Predicaire? ourdinari del Rey, &c. (Toulouse, 1790).
"Never forget, my children and good Comrades, to whom the Apostle Saint Paul, the greatest Preacher who has ever appeared on earth since the birth of Christianity, addressed this language. It was, so that you may know it, to our illustrious Ancestors, to the children of those Gauls, numbering more than a hundred and fifty thousand, who left this country some three thousand years ago to go beyond the seas, to the end of the known world of the time, to the depths of Asia to found the proud City of Ankara and to people the province which took their name and was called Galatia. " Ibid. , 1-2. The Galatians were indeed descended from Celts called Galatae.
The best scholarship on Villers-Cottere^ts does not bear out the claims of lin- guistic imperialism. See Peyre, La royaute? , 58-91; Trudeau, "L'ordonnance de Villers-Cottere^ts" (see Intro. , n. 24). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centu- ries, the crown made several further attempts to impose the administrative use of French (edicts were issued for Be? arn [1620], Flanders [1684], Alsace [1685], Roussillon [1700] and Lorraine [1748]). But these measures without exception applied only to areas recently annexed to France, where, unlike in Brittany and the Occitan regions, even the wealthier bourgeois and nobles generally did not speak French, thus making the new provinces seem far more "foreign" to their new rulers. See Brunot et al. , Histoire de la langue franc? aise (see Intro. , n. 30), V and VII, passim; Peyre, 156; Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, "Les minorite? s pe? riphe? riques: Inte? gration et conflits," in Revel and Burguie`re, eds. , Histoire de la France (see Ch. 1, n. 56), III, 455-630, esp. 623- 27; A. Brun, L'introduction de la langue franc? aise en Be? arn et en Roussillon (Paris, 1923). In Brittany, French had served as the official language since the eleventh century. Most recently, on the question of multilingualism in early
Notes to Pages 167-171
5.
Notes to Pages 171-172 275
? modern France, see the important work of Cohen, "Courtly French" (see
Intro. , n. 24).
6. On Occitan, see Schneider, Public Life in Toulouse, 1463-1789 (see Ch. 1,
n. 62); also Philippe Gardy, ed. , Pe`ire Godolin: Le Ramelet mondin et autres oeuvres (Aix-en-Provence, 1984). The last old regime edition of Godolin's works was published in Toulouse in 1774 under the title Las Obras de Pierre Goudelin. On Alsatian publishing, see Franklin Ford, Strasbourg in Transition, 1648-1789 (Cambridge, Mass. , 1958), 207-34.
7. [Espiard de la Borde], Essais (see Intro. , n. 37), II, bk. V (separate pagination), 63.
8. Various examples are given by He? le`ne Merlin, "Langue et souverainete? en France au XVIIe sie`cle: La production autonome d'un corps de langage," Annales: Histoires, sciences sociales, XLIX/2 (1994), 369-94, esp. 384-85.
9. I have found only two projects for linguistic unification before the late 1780s: one by the educational reformer Vallange, in Nouveau syste`me (2nd vol. of Nouveaux syste`mes ou Nouveaux plans de me? thode) (Paris, 1719), 178-79, and one by Nicolas Legras, sponsor of a royal academy and colle`ge in the town of Richelieu, in Acade? mie royale de Richelieu (see Intro. , n. 20), 59, 77 (Legras was most concerned with the language of the nobility). Even treatment of peasant education rarely raised the linguistic question. See Harvey Chisick, The Limits of Reform in the Enlightenment: Attitudes toward the Education of the Lower Classes in Eighteenth-Century France (Princeton, 1981). Notes to Pages 171-172
10. Quoted in Peyre, La royaute? , 10. Similar views are quoted in Brunot, V, 176- 81. By contrast, the Acade? mie Franc? aise defined a "nation" (in which category it included France) as "the inhabitants of a common country, who live under the same laws, and use the same language. Dictionnaire de l'Acade? mie franc? aise, 2 vols. (Paris, 1694), II, 110.
11. ". . . la causa damnada / de nosta lenga mesprezada . . . Cadun la leixa e desempara. / Tot lo mond l'apera barbara. " Pey de Garros, Poesias (Toulouse, 1887), 299.
12. At least outside of German-speaking Alsace, whose thriving literary societies had recently embraced the Sturm und Drang. Alsace generally constitutes an exception to the French pattern in matters linguistic. See Paul Le? vy, Histoire linguistique d'Alsace et de Lorraine, 2 vols. (Paris, 1929); Bell, "Nation-Build- ing" (see Ch. 2, n. 101).
13. Desgrouais, Les gasconismes corrige? s (Toulouse, 1768, repr. 1812), viii.
14. On Occitan in the eighteenth century, see Henri Boyer, Georges Fournier, et al. , Le texte occitan de la pe? riode re? volutionnaire: Inventaire, approches, lectures (Montpellier, 1989), esp. Philippe Gardy. "Les mode`les d'e? criture: Ruptures et continuite? s" (473-516); Rene? Merle, L'e? criture du provenc? al de 1775 a` 1840, 2 vols. (Beziers, 1990); Philippe Martel, ed. , L'invention du midi: Repre? sentations
276
Notes to Pages 172-173
? 15.
Notes to Pages 172-173
16.
du Sud pendant la pe? riode re? volutionnaire, published as nos. 15-16 of Amiras, repe`res occitans (1987); Genevie`ve Verme`s and Josiane Boutet, eds. , France, pays multilangue, 2 vols. (Paris, 1987); Henri Boyer and Philippe Gardy, eds. , La question linguistique au sud au moment de la Re? volution franc? aise, pub- lished as Lengas: Revue de sociolinguistique, nos. 17-18 (1985); Maurice Agulhon, ed. , La Re? volution ve? cue par la province: Mentalite? s et expressions populaires en Occitanie (Beziers, 1990); Cahiers critiques du patrimoine, no. 2 (1986): Re? volution Contre-Re?
volution: Le texte dialectal de la pe? riode re? volutionnaire: Provence, Bas-Languedoc oriental, Dauphine? .
Which languages qualified as patois is not always clear--perhaps inherently so, given the dismissive meaning the word generally carried. Sometimes it covered non-French standard vernaculars, and sometimes not. On the ety- mology of patois, see Jacques Monfrin, "Les parlers en France," in Franc? ois, ed. , La France et les franc? ais (see Intro. , n. 34), 766. On eighteenth-century lin- guistic theory, see most recently Sophia A. Rosenfeld, "A Revolution in Lan- guage: Words, Gestures and the Politics of Signs in France, 1745-1804," Ph. D. diss. , Harvard University (1995).
Obviously, only Romance-based patois could be fit into this particular mold. The best examples of the new attention to local languages are: Claude- Franc? ois Achard, Dictionnaire de la Provence et du comtat Venaissin, 4 vols. (Marseille, 1785), Je? re? mie-Jacques Oberlin, Essai sur le patois lorrain (Stras- bourg, 1775), and, in a more theoretical vein, Antoine Court de Ge? belin, Le Monde primitif analyse? et compare? avec le monde moderne (Paris, 1778). The older attitudes still prevailed in Rivarol's influential De l'universalite? de la langue franc? aise (see Ch. 3, n. 83), esp. 17, and in the Encyclope? die (see Pierre Achard, "Mise en ordre de la langue de raison: L'Etat et le franc? ais," in Max- Peter Gruenais, ed. , Etats de langue: Peut-on penser une politique linguistique? [Paris, 1986], 51-83). On the general phenomenon, see Jacques Revel, "Forms of Expertise: Intellectuals and 'Popular' Culture in France (1650-1800)," in Steven L. Kaplan, ed. , Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the 19th Century (Berlin, 1984), 255-273, and Vovelle, "La de? couverte en Provence" (see Ch. 4, n. 37).
Re? impression de l'ancien Moniteur (see Intro. , n. 3), August 25, 1790, 480. Many other similar examples could be adduced, most strikingly from the de- bates on the annexation of the (largely Occitan-speaking) French papal terri- tories. See Brunot, IX, pt. I, 8.
Hyslop, French Nationalism (see Intro. , n. 22), 47-48.
"Sur l'influence des mots et le pouvoir de l'usage" (see Ch. 5, n. 63), 1813- 1818.
Trois motions inconnues d'un de? pute? Gascon, ou Les Gasconnades patriotiques (n. p. [1789-90]), 22.
17.
18. 19.
20.
21. For a detailed publishing history, see Boyer et al. , Le texte occitan , 149-51.
22. On Sermet's literary abilities, see Timothy Jenkins, "Le pe`re Sermet entre Godolin et l'abbe? Gre? goire," in Christian Anatole, ed. , Pe`ire Godolin, 1580-
1649 (Toulouse, 1980), 215-23.
23. Daniel Bernard, "La re? volution franc? aise et la langue bretonne," Annales de
Bretagne, XXVIII (1912-13), 287-331. The laws mostly dealt with forest
rights and tax collection.
24. Charles-Franc? ois Bouche, La constitution franc? aise, Traduite, conforme? ment
aux Decre? ts de l'Asse? mble? e-nationale-constituante, en langue provenc? ale, et
pre? sente? e a` l'Assemble? e-nationale-le? gislative (Paris, 1792).
25. For instance de Certeau et al. (see Ch. 5, n. 66), 280, for the club of Stras-
bourg; Brunot, IX, pt. I, 66, for the club of Apt; Merle, 295 for the club of Aix; Emile Coornaert, La Flandre franc? aise de langue flamande (Paris, 1969), 266,
for clubs in Flanders.
Notes to Page 173
26. For instance, see Garres, Rasounomens, pensados & refflectious, d'un boun Page`s des embirouns de Toulouso (Toulouse, 1791), 24; Claude Mauron and Franc? ois-Xavier Emmanuelli, eds. , Textes politiques de l'e? poque re? volution- naire en langue provenc? ale (Saint-Re? my-de-Provence, 1986), 41-2, 64-71; Merle, 305; Georges Fournier, "La production toulousaine," in Boyer et al. , Le texte occitan, 391-7. Although nearly all club registers are in French, and rarely refer to linguistic issues, there is evidence that the oral deliberations sometimes took place in the dialect. See for instance Dominique Villar to Gre? goire, 7 Messidor II, Bibliothe`que Nationale de France, Nouvelles Acqui- sitions Franc? aises (hereafter BN, NAF) 2798 (responses to the enque^te de Gre? goire), fol. 70r.
27. Admittedly, this amounted to less than one percent of total revolutionary production. For a general survey of patois literature in the Revolution, see Philippe Martel, "Les textes occitans de la pe? riode re? volutionnaire: Un peu de ge? ographie," in Boyer et al. , 219-223. The Boyer volume contains (42-161) a detailed inventory of the Occitan texts. While some of the texts were appar- ently meant as "burlesque" amusement for French-speaking readers, many were clearly meant for reading aloud to largely illiterate, non-French speak- ing audiences.
28. Brunot, IX, pt. I, 48; Levy, passim. The newspaper, published by a fierce parti- san of the German language named Andreas Ulrich, was entitled Wo? chent- liche Nachrichten fu? r die deutschsprechenden Einwohner Frankreichs, besonders aber fu? r Handwerker und Bauer. Fewer items appeared in other local lan- guages.
29. The Assembly never allocated the necessary resources and personnel. How- ever, officials in what would soon become the Ministry of Justice, unsure of how to proceed, did hire several volunteers (though deferring payment).
Notes to Page 173 277
? 278
Notes to Pages 173-175
? Notes to Pages 173-175
30.
31.
Brunot and other historians of revolutionary linguistic policies, perhaps plac- ing too much faith in the efficacy of revolutionary government, thus argue that the Assembly actively pursued a "politique des traductions. " Yet the ar- chival evidence makes clear that the initiative came almost entirely from without. See Archives Nationales (Paris), AA 32, fols. 7, 15, 22, 24, 31. A vol- unteer named Dugas, an editor on Bare`re's Le point du jour, organized a translation workshop for the Occitan dialects and produced many manu- script volumes, but ministry official found the project unsatisfactory, and the collapse of the monarchy in any case rendered the documents obsolete before they could be printed (AA 32, passim). In 1792, the Convention formed a committee to study translations and confirmed the 1790 decree, but the prac- tical result was again essential nil, although a few repre? sentants en mission did produce bilingual affiches on their own initiative. See Brunot, IX, pt. I, 155- 62; Dentzel, Rapport et projet de de? cret faits au nom de la commission de traduction, par le citoyen Dentzel, de Landau (Paris, 1792).
Local languages were still spoken by the lower classes in many peripheral cit- ies. However, as Mona Ozouf points out, eighteenth-century writers took for granted that cities were a "crucible of homogeneity" and that "only in the countryside did the relationship between men and the land fully express it- self. " Ozouf, L'e? cole de la France (see Ch. 4, n. 37), 29.
Gre? goire's questionnaire is reprinted in de Certeau et al. , Une politique de la langue, 11-28. On the confusion between the de? crets of the National Assem- bly and de? crets de prise de corps, see Moniteur, February 9, 1790, 336. For later pronouncements by Gre? goire antedating his report to the Convention, see Guillaume, ed. , Proce`s-verbaux du Comite? d'Instruction publique (see Ch. 5, n. 90), II, 177 (July 30, 1793); III, 368 (3 Pluvio^se, II). For a legislative report by Talleyrand that pays attention to language, see Jules Mavidal and Emile Laurent, eds. , Archives parlementaires de 1787 a` 1860, 1st series, 82 vols. (Paris, 1862-1913), XXX, 472 (September 10, 1791). The other major report, by the Girondin Lanthenas, is discussed in Brunot, IX, pt. I, 135. In general, for other legislative activity on language from this period, particularly in the Convention's Comite? d'Instruction, see Brunot, IX, pt. I, 135-48. Among other revolutionary writings addressing the topic are Adresse aux Communes et aux socie? te? s populaires de la Re? publique . . . lue au Conseil Ge? ne? ral de la Commune de Paris (Paris, 1792), 7 (Bibliothe`que de la Socie? te? de Port-Royal, hereafter B. S. P. , Re? v. 223, no. 14); Pierre-Vincent Chalvet, Des qualite? s et des devoirs d'un Instituteur publique (Paris, 1793); the Chronique de Paris of No- vember 10, 1792; the prospectus for the Feuille villageoise, the newspaper aimed explicitly at the peasantry (reprinted in de Certeau et al. , 283-85).
On the continuing need for translation, see de Certeau et al. , 298-99; Gre? goire, in de Certeau et al. , 310. Gre? goire served on the Convention's com-
32.
mittee on translations in 1793, and while in Nice as a repre? sentant en mission, himself had proclamations translated into Italian. See Henri Gre? goire et al.
