A PARIS,
Chez J. J. Smits et Ce., Imp.-Lib.,
rue de Tournon, N°. 1133,
Faubourg Germain.
L'AN VII DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE.
As part of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française Database Project directed by R. Wooldridge & I. Leroy-Turcan, Professor Douglas Kibbee, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the ARTFL Project, University of Chicago, are collaborating to perform data capture, required editing, and development of a search engine for the 5th Edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, published in 1798 (Year VII). Data capture of this edition was made possible by a grant from the Critical Research Initiatives program of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Electronic versions of several editions of the Académie dictionary are planned. Eventually, they will form a common database that will permit users to consult each edition separately or, in order to trace development of the dictionary over time, all versions at once. Also see the preliminary version of the 1st Edition (1694) and the 6th edition (1835)..
According to tradition, and in André Morellet's words, the Academy dictionary was intended to define the correct, common usage of words in non-technical French: "[...] Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie est un témoin de l'usage qui gouverne la langue française, de celui qui est le plus général parmi les personnes qui parlent correctement et purement." But the violent political upheaval of the Revolution troubled this vision of the Dictionary's function, and it quickly assumed great political significance. In debates at the time, political thinkers attributed great importance to the role of words in the formation of political thought; the language of the monarchy was thus suspect. In many cases, there was a desire for linguistic reform and purification that would second the political transformation of the nation. Rather than completely rewriting the Academy dictionary, however, it was finally concluded that the strong influence of the "esprit philosophique" among the Academicians during the second half of the century had led to considerable progress. The 5th edition came to be viewed as a transitional document between the language of the Old Regime and the new Republic. As Dominique Joseph Garat states in the "Discours préliminaire", "[...] Il a été fini à l'instant où la Monarchie finissoit elle-même; et [...] par cela seul, il sera pour tous les Peuples et pour tous les Siècles la ligne ineffaçable qui tracera et constatera, dans la même Langue, les limites de la Langue Monarchique et de la Langue Républicaine" (p. x).
Dorothy Medlin, "André Morellet and the Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française", Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 327 (1995), pp. 183-197.
Martine Reid, "Language under Revolutionary Pressure", in A New History of French Literature, ed. Denis Hollier (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 572-579.