Claude Favre, sieur de Vaugelas
born January 6, 1585, Meximieux,
France
died February 1650, Paris
French grammarian and an original
member of the Académie Française who
played a major role in standardizing the
French language of literature and of
polite society. A courtier, he was a
habitué of the salon of the Marquise de
Rambouillet, where his taste and
judgment in questions of speech and
writing earned the respect of men of
letters.
In his Remarques sur la langue
françoise, utiles à ceux qui veulent
bien parler et bien escrire (1647;
“Remarks on the French Language, Useful
for Those Who Wish to Speak Well and
Write Well”), Vaugelas recorded what he
considered good usage: the speech of the
“soundest” elements of the court and the
written language of the most intelligent
authors. His contemporaries soon
accepted his decisions as authoritative
in cases of doubtful or conflicting
usage; parler Vaugelas meant to speak
not merely correctly but elegantly, and
the Remarques became la bible de l’usage.
Vaugelas was sensible enough to
realize that good usage changed with
changes of interest in society. But when
Richelieu took over his literary
discussion group of nine to form the
Académie Française, he instructed them
to create firm rules for the language
and to render it pure and eloquent.
Vaugelas’ dicta were then taken too
literally. The rigidity imposed by the
Académie was resisted by authors in the
second half of the 17th century, and,
even some of Vaugelas’ contemporaries,
not content with the formal language of
the court, spiced their writing with
language of the common people.
Ultimately, however, the Académie
eliminated the excesses of Renaissance
diction and set a standard of literary
taste.
