Deffense de la langue française

12mo of (18) ff, 341 pp., (8) ff.
Red morocco, triple gilt fillet framing the covers, large gilt-stamped coat of arms at center, corner fleurons, richly decorated raised-band spine, decorated edges, inner roll-tooled border, gilt edges. Armorial binding of the period.

170 x 97 mm.

Charpentier (1620-1702). Defense of the French language for the inscription of the Arc de Triomphe dedicated to the king.
Paris, 1676.

Very rare first edition printed on strong Holland paper of thisDefense of the French language by the academician Charpentier dedicated to King Louis XIV, bound in period morocco with the arms of the Marquis de Louvois.

The author, one of the first members of the Académie des Inscriptions, offers an important and reasoned reflection in favor of using French for the inscription of the Arc de Triomphe. This concerns the Arc begun in 1670 near the Porte Saint-Martin in honor of Louis XIV.

“To Father Lucas, who had defended the use of Latin in his De Monumentis publicis latine inscribendis, delivered in 1676 at the Collège Louis-le-Grand and published the following year, François Charpentier responds with a Defense of the French language for the inscription of the arc de triomphe (1676). François Charpentier, perpetual secretary of the Académie française, would take up and expand his arguments in his extensive treatise De l’excellence de la langue française (1683). In this quarrel, the Academy played an essential role: it was also as an academician that Charpentier reacted.

This author agrees in considering that the French language had reached a point of maturity he deemed definitive: for Charpentier, “this language, which has been judged so beautiful by other nations, has never been in such a high degree of perfection as it is at present [… ].” This insistence is also a response to the supporters of Latin, who willingly take up for themselves the argument, traditional since Dante, which opposes the changing nature of vernacular languages to the fixity of Latin" (Béatrice Guion)

Precious and superb copy bound in period morocco with the arms of François‑Michel Le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois and Courtenvaux, second son of Michel, Chancellor of France, and Elisabeth Turpin, born January 8, 1641. He was first a counselor in the Parliament of Metz and obtained on December 13, 1655, survivorship of the office; Marquis de Courtenvaux, became in 1666 Secretary of State for War by virtue of his father's resignation, Superintendent General of Posts in 1668, Chancellor and Commander of the King's Orders on January 1^st, 1671, Minister of State in February 1672, Grand Huntsman, Vicar General of the Order of Saint-Lazare and of Mount Carmel on February 4, 1673, and Superintendent of Buildings, Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce of France in September 1684. Louvois’s administration was most remarkable and assured France’s military supremacy, but his harshness and ambition provoked several unnecessary wars and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; he had lost much of his influence when he died suddenly at Versailles on July 16, 1691.