Breton, Raymond:

$37,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

DICTIONAIRE CARAIBE FRANCOIS MESLÉ DE QUANTITÉ DE REMARQUES HISTORIQUES POUR L'ESCLAIRCISSEMENT DE LA LANGUE. [bound with:] DICTIONAIRE FRANCOIS-CARAIBE. [bound with:] PETIT CATECHISME OU SOMMAIRE ... Three scarce, important, and early works, all in first edition, on the language of the Carib people of the West Indies. All three were prepared by the French Dominican missionary, Raymond Breton, and were issued in close succession. Breton (1609–79) was one of the earliest French missionaries to the Antilles, arriving on Guadeloupe in 1635 and spending nearly two decades in the Antilles. He was one of four of his order who helped establish the mission of the Frères Pecheurs in the French West Indies, and seven years after his arrival he was allowed to establish a mission on the island of Domenica, which put him in close contact with the Carib people. Breton also issued a fourth work in 1667, the Grammaire Caraibe, which is not present here (likely this group was bound before its publication). Each work stands on its own and they are sometimes found separately, though preferably bound together, as here.Breton's works are not simply dictionaries or catalogues of the Carib language. It is clear that he had attained a remarkably sympathetic understanding of the culture of the Indians, as well as a comprehensive grasp of their language. He translated spoken Carib into spoken French in order to teach future Dominican missionaries how to communicate with the tribe, and, as Gaetano DeLe

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