Noël Coypel’s educational journey to Rome at the end of 1672 and the beginning of 1673

The aim of this article is to present the circumstances of Noël Coypel’s appointment as rector of the French Academy in Rome and to trace the route of his didactic journey from Paris to Rome with the Prix de Rome scholars entrusted to him. The paper is an attempt to answer the following questions: why a more difficult route through the Alps was chosen (and not, for example, a river and sea route), in what way was the journey educational, and what role did the documents given to Coypel play in securing the expedition. The article is based on an analysis of administrative records during the reign of Louis XIV, lists of superintendents and directors of the French Academy in Rome, accounts of royal buildings, and minutes of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris. The paper uses the analytical method, the comparative method, the synthetic method, source criticism, argumentum ex silentio inference, and the geographical method when discussing the itinerary. Although the trip was purposeful and related to Coypel’s new position, he designed it in such a way as to not so much get to the destination quickly, but to show his students as much as possible. Coypel introduced the royal scholars to masterpieces of painting and sculpture at centers along a route through Dijon, Lyon, Chambéry, the Mont Cenis Pass, Turin, Milan, Bologna and Florence. The crossing of the Alps, though dangerous, was most often chosen because of the artistic reputation of the cities there. The trip was educational at the expense of comfort or safety. Coypel, as a guide and teacher (paidagōgós – παιδαγωγός) led his charges by overseeing their learning during and through the journey. Wandering to the Eternal City was part of a painter’s education (paideía – παιδεία) in the seventeenth century and was part of Coypel’s didactic work allowing young people to be inspired by direct exposure to masterpieces. The journey had an eminently didactic and artistic character, but also an initiatory one, as it gradually initiated and prepared the students for the experience of Rome, the center of artistic life at that time.

Linguistic culture and politics in France

The rise of the French national politics was taking place simultaneously with the rise of the French power and territories in Europe. The first evidence of the emergence of the French language distinguished from Latin is the text of the ‘’French’’ version of the 842-nd Strasbourg Oath. France is an example of how ideas and myths about a language become ideologies and how it forms a part of a language policy, along with language planning and language practices.The French language was being established over a long period of time. From the 17th century onwards, increasing attention was paid to this issue. It is especially interesting to establish a high level of French spelling, the expression of good spelling in the French language has become an object of social values. On October 19 and 20, 1794, the Public Instruction Committee introduced a new project to teach French to all. French became the language of writing before it set foot in education.The 17-th and 18-th centuries became a period of legalization of the French language. The greatest philosophers and writers of this time legalized the French language in poetry and fiction. At the same time, it became the language of scientific writing. French gained the status of the most brilliant language in Europe over the last two centuries through the French Academy and the French Revolution. It was a new ‘’classical“ language.

The "Dictionary of the French Academy" digitized, open and free

Few people are familiar with the Dictionary of the French Academy. However, it provides the official French spelling. Each edition introduces words and graphic modifications. Since 2020, a digital portal provides access to 9 editions, to the conjugation tables of 6,200 verbs and to 900 "Dire, ne pas dire" notices from the French Academy. The rectified forms in 1990 were incorporated at various stages. Hypertext links lead to external resources such as the France Terme database, which offers officially recommended scientific and technical terms, and the Base de données lexicographiques panfrancophone (B.D.L.P.), which brings together lexical varieties from twenty Francophone countries. The Dictionary of the Academy and its supplements, with direct and free access, can be consulted on any digital medium (tablet, mobile phone, computer). www.dictionnaire-academie.fr

From Translation to Rewriting at Marguerite Yourcenar for a Poetic Palimpsest of Creation

Marguerite Yourcenar is the first woman to sit at the French Academy. His writings are prolific and polymorphous, offering very rich material for analysis. Critics were unanimous that his work is complex; a complexity likely to be justified by the journey of a learned intellectual who has crisscrossed the centuries through the practice of reading, translating and also rewriting. translation is a real passion for him, another way of writing. Rewriting is the result of the act of translating. In the case of Yourcenar it is recasting, literary exercise and hermeneutics which offers him the opportunity on the one hand, to question his ideas and the ideas of others, on the other hand to self-analyze, to affirm his freedom and to reinvent his life, in short to translate himself. To rewrite is also to re-construct a character, a destiny, a History, it is also to re-construct oneself, to overcome one’s shortcomings, to remake what is wrong and to authenticate one’s emotions. The translation-re-writing bi-polarity is at this stage an aesthetic that allows the writer to complete her Great Work and rediscover the unity of her method. This is the problematic that we will try to deepen through some examples that we consider relevant from the work of Marguerite Yourcenar while relying on studies of modern poetics and comparative literature which are interested in this interaction. between the two instances; works (first writing) to translation (second writing).

The Semantic and Syntactic Evolution of Conjunctions in French: The Case of ains

The present study is part of the current of diachronic research on conjunctions. All linguists confirm that in Old French two opposing conjunctions were used: ains / mais. However, in modern French, only one contrast conjunction provides an opposing connection, namely mais. The reasons for the rapid decline of the ains conjunction are not clear, and the time of its disappearance is not precise. In this article, the author focuses on the semantic analysis of ains from Old French until the 17th century, i.e. until the time where this conjunction passed into archaism and when the Academy declared: “it is old” (Dictionary of the French Academy 1694). The study deals with the specific syntactic uses of the conjunction in question in various literary texts. By referring to descriptive, semantic and functional analyses, it is possible to identify specific features of the ains conjunction, as well as to reveal the conditions under which its disappearance took place. The study is also trying to answer the question why this Old French conjunction, very common in the past, disappeared.

MARTHA BIBESCU, A „FLOWER” AMONG ROMANIAN FRANCOPHONE WRITERS

Princess Martha Bibescu plays an important role in Romanian Francophone culture. A Romanian aristocrat, she conducted a successful literary career writing both nonfiction and novels during the first half of the twentieth century. She was also a laureate of the French Academy and a member of the Royal Belgian Academy of French Language and Literature. Known for her charming personality, intelligence and beauty, she proudly shared her dual cultural identity: French and Romanian. During the first part of her life, Princess Bibescu was admired for her wealth and grace, and her relations with the last kings of Europe as well as with an impressive number of chiefs of state. In the second part of her life, a period marked by hardship and the loss of a huge fortune, Martha Bibescu travelled, wrote, experienced personally the disruptive events in European history, assumed with dignity her social role of confident and supporting relative, turned writing into a livelihood, overrode personal loss and cherished the only single passion in her life: writing.

Neoclassicism and Religious Art in 18th-Century Europe

The term “Neoclassicism” refers to an era when a large number of artists and scholars across Europe in the 18th century took inspiration from the history and material remains of classical antiquity, which was defined as ancient Greece and Rome. While Neoclassicism is often considered a stylistic trend, artists worked across stylistic categories, yet they were all part of a broad milieu that responded to profound societal changes by seeking out classical precedents for questions posed by Enlightenment thinkers. These questions included the purpose of religion in society, where philosophers including John Locke (1632–1704) and François-Marie Arouet Voltaire (1694–1778) theorized new spiritual modes to examine human existence. Many religious painters of the 18th century studied at the French Academy of Painting and Sculpture established in Paris in 1648 under royal sponsorship that dictated taste, and these artists were championed for their ability to depict grand expressions of human emotion learned from antiquity and from classicizing Renaissance and Baroque artists, including French painter Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), who popularized the Roman concept of exempla virtutis. Jean- Baptiste Colbert, the First Minister to King Louis XIV and Vice-Protector of the Academy, promoted this grand classicizing Baroque style as the elevated style of the aristocracy, which laid the foundation for Neoclassicism. For French philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784), art could provide pleasure, but a superior artwork provided a visual beauty that inspired virtuous behavior; thus, while not all art served a religious function, artworks often showed examples of virtue. For example, Diderot, who reported on the biennial exhibitions sponsored by the Academy in Paris, praised Jacques-Louis David’s (1748–1825) Oath of the Horatii (1784, Louvre Museum, Paris), a depiction of a 7th-century bce Roman legend, for its demonstration of patriotic sacrifice. Many of these moralizing narratives drew upon stories from classical antiquity, learned by artists trained at the French Academy in Rome (established in 1666) during a period of study sometimes called the Grand Tour. Neoclassical art was also shaped by the intense cultural questioning that arose with the French Revolution, and it found fertile ground during the Industrial Revolution. Religious art had a complicated historical development in the 18th century given the dramatic changes that disrupted religious institutions and church patronage in favor of secular patrons and new subjects. Nonetheless, the moralizing tendencies of Neoclassicism and the academic favoring of historical painting continued to provide a place for religious art and architecture throughout the 18th century, much of which deserves further study.

The French Academy of Sciences: Deliberations related to the discovery of anaesthesia

In the mid-19th century, the French Academy of Sciences was one of the oldest and most prominent scientific institutions in the world. Individuals seeking credit for the discovery of surgical anaesthesia contacted the French academy to achieve recognition from this prestigious body of scientists and to spread news of the discovery throughout continental Europe. The French Academy of Sciences was established under the reign of King Louis XIV in 1666 with the goal of supporting and advancing scientific research. Membership was limited to the most accomplished French scientists, who presented their research at weekly meetings and advised the French government on scientific matters. The academy began their deliberations on the discovery of anaesthesia in January 1847. Since anaesthesia had already been tested in the United States and Great Britain, the main contributions of the French academy deliberations included refining administration techniques and documenting the effects of anaesthesia on animals and humans. Recognition of surgical anaesthesia by the French Academy of Sciences and the swift adoption of its use in surgical practice throughout the country lent credibility to this new discovery and enabled the discipline of surgery to progress. Nevertheless, the academy was not able to solve the initial problem for which they may have been contacted—the dispute about which individual deserved credit for the discovery of anaesthesia.

Le vocabulaire de l’architecture dans le Dictionnaire de l’Académie française (1762) : après les traces de Nicot

Studies on the lexicographical treatment of technical architectural terms in general language dictionaries are scarce. Our article shows how architectural technical terms were treated by the French Academy in the fourth edition of its dictionary (1762) through the study of a series of specific terms related to architecture and building. Jean Nicot's Thresor de la langue françoyse, tant ancienne que moderne (1606) is considered to be one of the first dictionaries to have identified a large number of architectural terms. In this work, we trace the presence or absence of these terms in the Dictionary of the French Academy (1762) and study whether they have become part of the common language or whether they continue to be regarded as specialized terms. Les études sur le traitement lexicographique des termes techniques d'architecture dans les dictionnaires de langue générale sont rares. Notre article montre comment les termes techniques concernant l’architecture ont été traités par l'Académie française dans la quatrième édition de son dictionnaire (1762) à travers l'étude d'une série de termes spécifiques liés à l'architecture et au bâtiment. Le Thresor de la langue françoyse, tant ancienne que moderne de Jean Nicot (1606) est considéré comme l'un des premiers dictionnaires à avoir identifié un grand nombre de termes architecturaux. Dans cet ouvrage, nous retraçons la présence ou l'absence de ces termes dans le Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (1762) et étudions s'ils sont devenus partie intégrante de la langue commune ou s'ils continuent à être considérés comme des termes spécialisés.