Émile Littré
Encyclopedia
Émile Maximilien Paul Littré (1 February 1801 – 2 June 1881) was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 lexicographer and philosopher, best known for his Dictionnaire de la langue française, commonly called "The Littré".

Biography

Émile Littré was born in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. His father, Michel-François Littré, had been a gunner and, later, a sergeant-major of marine artillery in the French navy
Navy
A navy is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake- or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions...

 who was deeply imbued with revolutionary ideas of the day. Settling down as a tax collector, he married Sophie Johannot, a free-thinker
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...

 like himself, and devoted himself to the education of his son Émile. The boy was sent to the Lycée Louis-le-Grand
Lycée Louis-le-Grand
The Lycée Louis-le-Grand is a public secondary school located in Paris, widely regarded as one of the most rigorous in France. Formerly known as the Collège de Clermont, it was named in king Louis XIV of France's honor after he visited the school and offered his patronage.It offers both a...

, where Louis Hachette
Louis Christophe François Hachette
Louis Christophe François Hachette was a French publisher.He was born at Rethel in the Ardennes département of France. After studying three years at prestigious École Normale Supérieure with the view of becoming a teacher, he was in 1822 on political grounds expelled from the seminary...

 and Eugène Burnouf
Eugène Burnouf
Eugène Burnouf was an eminent French scholar and orientalist who made significant contributions to the deciphering of Old Persian cuneiform....

 became his friends. After he completed his studies at the lycée, he was undecided as to what career he should adopt, however, he devoted himself to mastering the English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 languages, classical and Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

 literature, and philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...

.

He finally decided to become a student of medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....

 in 1822. He passed all his examinations in due course, and had only his thesis to prepare in order to obtain his degree as doctor when, in 1827, his father died leaving his mother without means. He abandoned his degree at once despite his keen interest in medicine, and, while attending lectures by Pierre Rayer
Pierre François Olive Rayer
Pierre François Olive Rayer was a French physician who was a native of Saint Sylvain. He made important contributions in the fields of pathological anatomy, physiology, comparative pathology and parasitology....

, began teaching Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 and Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 to earn a living. He carried a musket on the populist side in the July Revolution
July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution or in French, saw the overthrow of King Charles X of France, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would in turn be overthrown...

 of 1830, and was one of the members of the National Guard
National Guard (France)
The National Guard was the name given at the time of the French Revolution to the militias formed in each city, in imitation of the National Guard created in Paris. It was a military force separate from the regular army...

 who followed Charles X
Charles X of France
Charles X was known for most of his life as the Comte d'Artois before he reigned as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. A younger brother to Kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile and eventually succeeded him...

 to Rambouillet
Rambouillet
Rambouillet is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France.It is located in the suburbs of Paris southwest from the center...

. In 1831, he obtained an introduction to Armand Carrel
Armand Carrel
Armand Carrel was a French journalist and political writer.-Biography:Jean-Baptiste Nicolas Armand Carrel was born at Rouen. His father was a wealthy merchant, and he received a liberal education at the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen. , afterwards attending the military school at St Cyr...

, the editor of Le National
Le National (newspaper)
Le National was a French daily founded in 1830 by Adolphe Thiers, Armand Carrel, François-Auguste Mignet and the librarian-editor Auguste Sautelet, as the mouthpiece of the liberal opposition to the Second Restoration....

, who gave him the task of reading English and German papers for excerpts. By chance, in 1835, Carrel discovered Littré's skills as a writer and from that time on, he was a constant contributor to the journal, eventually becoming its director.

In 1836, Littré began to contribute articles on a wide range of subjects to the Revue des deux mondes
Revue des deux mondes
The Revue des deux Mondes is a French language monthly literary and cultural affairs magazine that has been published in Paris since 1829....

, and in 1837, he married. In 1839, the first volume of his complete works of Hippocrates
Hippocrates
Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos was an ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles , and is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine...

 appeared in print. Due to the outstanding quality of this work, he was elected to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres is a French learned society devoted to the humanities, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the Institut de France.-History:...

 in the same year. He came across the works of Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte , better known as Auguste Comte , was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism...

, the reading of which formed, as he himself said, "the cardinal point of his life." From this time forward, the influence of positivism
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....

 affected his own life, and, what is of more importance, he influenced positivism, giving as much to this philosophy as he received from it. He soon became a friend of Comte, and popularised his ideas in numerous works on the positivist philosophy. He continued translating and publishing his edition of Hippocrates' writings, which was not completed until 1862, and he published a similar edition of Pliny
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

's Natural History. After 1844, he took Fauriel
Claude Charles Fauriel
Claude Charles Fauriel was a French historian, philologist and critic.-Biography:He was born at Saint-Étienne, Loire, the son of a poor joiner, but received a good education in the Oratorian colleges of Tournon and Lyon...

's place on the committee engaged to produce the Histoire littéraire de la France
Histoire littéraire de la France
Histoire littéraire de la France is an enormous history of French literature initiated in 1733 by Dom Rivest and the Benedictines of St. Maur but it was abandoned in 1763 after the publication of volume XII...

, where his knowledge of the early French language and literature was invaluable.

Littré started work on his great Dictionnaire de la langue française in about 1844, which was not to be completed until thirty years later. He participated in the revolution of July 1848
French Revolution of 1848
The 1848 Revolution in France was one of a wave of revolutions in 1848 in Europe. In France, the February revolution ended the Orleans monarchy and led to the creation of the French Second Republic. The February Revolution was really the belated second phase of the Revolution of 1830...

, and in the repression of the extreme Republican Party in June 1849. His essays, contributed during this period to the National, were collected together and published under the title of Conservation, revolution et positivisme in 1852, and show a thorough acceptance of all the doctrines propounded by Comte. However, during the later years of his master's life, he began to perceive that he could not wholly accept all the dogmas or the more mystic ideas of his friend and master. He concealed his differences of opinion, and Comte failed to recognise that his pupil had outgrown him, as he himself had outgrown his master Henri de Saint-Simon
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, often referred to as Henri de Saint-Simon was a French early socialist theorist whose thought influenced the foundations of various 19th century philosophies; perhaps most notably Marxism, positivism and the discipline of sociology...

.

Comte's death in 1858 freed Littré from any fear of embittering his master. He published his own ideas in his Paroles de la philosophie positive in 1859. Four years later, in a work of greater length, he published Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive, which traces the origin of Comte's ideas through Turgot, Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....

, and Saint-Simon. The work eulogises Comte's own life, his method of philosophy, his great services to the cause and the effect of his works, and proceeds to show where he himself differs from him. He approved wholly of Comte's philosophy, his great laws of society and his philosophical method, which indeed he defended warmly against John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...

. However, he stated that, while he believed in a positivist philosophy, he did not believe in a "religion of humanity".

About 1863, after completing his translations of Hippocrates and his Pliny, he set to work in earnest on his great French dictionary
Dictionary
A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...

. He was invited to join the Académie française
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...

, but he rejected the offer, owing to his opposition of Félix Dupanloup
Félix Dupanloup
Félix Antoine Philibert Dupanloup was a French ecclesiastic.-Biography:He was born at Saint-Félix, in Haute-Savoie. In his earliest years he was confided to the care of his brother, a priest in the diocese of Chambéry. In 1810 he was sent to a pensionnat ecclésiastique at Paris...

, bishop of Orléans, who denounced him as the head of the French materialists in his Avertissement aux pères de famille. At this time, he also started La Revue de philosophie positive with Grégoire Wyrouboff
Grigorii Nikolayevich Vyrubov
Grigorii Nikolayevich Vyrubov, or Grégoire Wyrouboff was a Russian Positivist philosopher and historian of science.Born in Moscow, Vyrubov was brought up in Italy and France before studying medicine and natural philosophy at the University of Moscow...

, a magazine that embodied the views of modern positivists.

Thus, his life was absorbed in literary work until the events that overthrew the Second Empire
Second French Empire
The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...

 called him to take a part in politics. He felt himself too old to undergo the privations of the Siege of Paris
Paris Commune
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...

, and retired with his family to Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...

. He was summoned by Gambetta
Léon Gambetta
Léon Gambetta was a French statesman prominent after the Franco-Prussian War.-Youth and education:He is said to have inherited his vigour and eloquence from his father, a Genovese grocer who had married a Frenchwoman named Massabie. At the age of fifteen, Gambetta lost the sight of his right eye...

 to Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...

 to lecture on history, and thence to Versailles to take his seat in the senate to which he had been chosen by the département of the Seine
Seine (département)
Seine was a département of France encompassing Paris and its immediate suburbs. Its préfecture was Paris and its official number was 75. The Seine département was abolished in 1968 and its territory divided among four new départements....

. In December 1871, he was elected a member of the Académie française in spite of the renewed opposition of Msgr. Dupanloup, who resigned his seat rather than receive him.

Littré's Dictionnaire de la langue française ("Dictionary of the French Language") was completed in 1873 after nearly 30 years of work. The draft was written on 415,636 sheets, bundled in packets of one thousand, stored in eight white wooden crates that filled the cellar of Littré's home in Mesnil-le-Roi. The landmark effort gave authoritative definitions and usage descriptions to every word based on the various meanings it had held in the past. When it was published by Hachette, it was the largest lexicographical work on the French language at that time. It is difficult to point to what to admire most in the author's work: the tirelessness of his research, the precision of his method, the depth of his erudition, or the wisdom of his judgements, the creation of which occurred in the midst of profound patriotic anxiety and upheaval.

In 1875, he applied for membership in the Masonic Lodge La Clémente Amitié (Grand Orient de France
Grand Orient de France
The Grand Orient de France is the largest of several Masonic organizations in France and the oldest in Continental Europe, founded in 1733.-Foundation:...

). When asked whether he believed in the existence of a supreme being in the presence of 1000 Freemasons
Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...

, he replied:

In the same year, Littré was elected Senator for Life
Senator for life
A senator for life is a member of the senate or equivalent upper chamber of a legislature who has life tenure. , 7 Italian Senators out of 322, 4 out of the 47 Burundian Senators and all members of the British House of Lords have lifetime tenure...

 of the Third Republic
French Third Republic
The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...

. His most notable writings during these years were his political papers that attacked and revealed the confederacy of the Orléanist
Orléanist
The Orléanists were a French right-wing/center-right party which arose out of the French Revolution. It governed France 1830-1848 in the "July Monarchy" of king Louis Philippe. It is generally seen as a transitional period dominated by the bourgeoisie and the conservative Orleanist doctrine in...

s and Legitimists
Legitimists
Legitimists are royalists in France who adhere to the rights of dynastic succession of the descendants of the elder branch of the Bourbon dynasty, which was overthrown in the 1830 July Revolution. They reject the claim of the July Monarchy of 1830–1848, whose kings were members of the junior...

 against the Republic; his re-editions of many of his old articles and books, among others the Conservation, révolution et positivisme of 1852 (which he reprinted word for word, appending a formal, categorical renunciation of many of the Comtist doctrines therein contained); and a little tract, Pour la dernière fois, in which he maintained his unalterable belief in the philosophy of Materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...

.

When it became obvious that the old man would not live much longer, his wife and daughter, who had always been fervent Catholics, strove to convert him to their religion. He had long discussions with Father
Clergy
Clergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. A clergyman, churchman or cleric is a member of the clergy, especially one who is a priest, preacher, pastor, or other religious professional....

 Louis Millériot, a celebrated Controversialist
Polemic
A polemic is a variety of arguments or controversies made against one opinion, doctrine, or person. Other variations of argument are debate and discussion...

, and Abbé
Abbé
Abbé is the French word for abbot. It is the title for lower-ranking Catholic clergymen in France....

 Henri Huvelin, the noted priest of Église Saint-Augustin
Église Saint-Augustin de Paris
The Église Saint-Augustin de Paris is a church in the VIIIe arrondissement of Paris, France. Here Charles de Foucauld was converted by its priest, Father Huvelin. During the Second Empire, this area was undergoing considerable building work and demographic movement...

, who were much grieved at his death. When Littré was near death, he converted, was baptised by the abbé
Abbé
Abbé is the French word for abbot. It is the title for lower-ranking Catholic clergymen in France....

 and his funeral was conducted with the rites of the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

. Littré is interred at Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.

Translations & re-editions

  • Translation of the complete works of Hippocrates
    Hippocrates
    Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos was an ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles , and is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine...

     (1839–1863)
  • Translation of Pliny
    Pliny the Elder
    Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

    's Natural History (1848–1850)
  • Translation of Strauss's Vie de Jésus (1839–1840)
  • Translation of Müller
    Johannes Peter Müller
    Johannes Peter Müller , was a German physiologist, comparative anatomist, and ichthyologist not only known for his discoveries but also for his ability to synthesize knowledge.-Early years and education:...

    's Manuel de physiologie (1851)
  • Re-edition of the political writings of Armand Carrel
    Armand Carrel
    Armand Carrel was a French journalist and political writer.-Biography:Jean-Baptiste Nicolas Armand Carrel was born at Rouen. His father was a wealthy merchant, and he received a liberal education at the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen. , afterwards attending the military school at St Cyr...

    , with notes (1854–1858)

Dictionaries & writings on language

  • Reprise du Dictionnaire de médecine, de chirurgie, etc. with Charles-Philippe Robin
    Charles-Philippe Robin
    Charles-Philippe Robin was a French anatomist, biologist, and histologist who was born in Jasseron, département Ain....

    , of Pierre-Hubert Nysten
    Pierre-Hubert Nysten
    Pierre-Hubert Nysten was a Belgian-French physiologist and pediatrician who was a native of Liège. He studied medicine in Paris, and subsequently became a professor at the École de Médecine in Paris....

     (1855)
  • Histoire de la langue française a collection of magazine articles (1862)
  • Dictionnaire de la langue française ("Le Littré") (1863-1873)
  • Comment j'ai fait mon dictionnaire (1880)

Philosophy

  • Analyse raisonnée du cours de philosophie positive de M. A. Comte (1845)
  • Application de la philosophie positive au gouvernement (1849)
  • Conservation, révolution et positivisme (1852, 2nd ed., with supplement, 1879)
  • Paroles de la philosophie positive (1859)
  • Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive (1863)
  • La Science au point de vue philosophique (1873)
  • Fragments de philosophie et de sociologie contemporaine (1876)

Other works

  • Études et glanures (1880)
  • La Verité sur la mort d'Alexandre le grand (1865)
  • Études sur les barbares et le moyen âge (1867)
  • Médecine et médecins (1871)
  • Littérature et histoire (1875)
  • Discours de reception à l'Académie française (1873)

Sources

For his life consult C.A. Sainte-Beuve
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was a literary critic and one of the major figures of French literary history.-Early years:...

, Notice sur M. Littré, sa vie et ses travaux (1863); and Nouveaux Lundis, vol. v.; also the notice by M. Durand-Gréville in the Nouvelle Revue of August 1881; E Caro
Elme Marie Caro
Elme Marie Caro , was a French philosopher.His father, a professor of philosophy, gave him an excellent education at the Stanislas College and the École Normale, where he graduated in 1848...

, Littré et le positivisme (1883); Pasteur
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist born in Dole. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of diseases. His discoveries reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and he created the first vaccine for rabies and anthrax. His experiments...

, Discours de récéption at the Academy, where he succeeded Littré, and a reply by Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan was a French expert of Middle East ancient languages and civilizations, philosopher and writer, devoted to his native province of Brittany...

.

External links


Online dictionaries

Dictionnaire de la langue française Littré (1863–1876)
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