TRIPPAULT, Léon.

by Léon Trippault

£8,750 · Offered by Sokol Books

Exceptionally rare first edition, and a fine copy, beautifully bound by Hardy, of this French Greek dictionary published in Orleans, relating to the etymology of French words derived from the Greek. Léon Trippault, sieur de Bardis, was a lawyer in Orléans and one of the first authors to contemplate the origin of the French language; he was convinced of the Greek origin of French and tried to prove it through a series of works including this dictionary in which he traces French words back to Greek. His thesis had its basis in the myth that France’s first kings came from Greece, or that France was named for Francion, a son of Hector, who escaped the sack of Troy. Henri Estienne similarly looked for Greek origins for the French language, assimilating the glory of Classical Athens with sixteenth-century France. “In the 16th century, the history of the French language served as primary evidence in the history of French institutions. The history of those institutions was itself crucial to the debate on the role of the monarchy, which in turn related to the Wars of Religion. French clearly had close affinity to Latin, and thus to Italian and Spanish. However, humanist admiration for Greek, Reform interest in Hebrew, and concurrent bursts of celtomania and xenophobia led to theories about the origin of the French language that resolutely pursued the implausible. The thesis that French had Greek origins was supported by a number of Classical and biblical sources (Léon Trippault provid

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.