Abel Hermant

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Abel Hermant (1903). Photo by Paul Nadar
Nathalie Madoré 1895, novel. Cover ( lithograph ) by Steinlen

Abel Hermant (born February 3, 1862 in Paris , † September 29, 1950 in Chantilly ) was a French writer, journalist, language purist and member of the Académie française . In 1945 he was sentenced to life imprisonment as a collaborator and expelled from the Académie française.

life and work

Hermant passed the entrance examination to the École normal supérieure in 1880 as the best of his year, but left the university and led an existence as a writer and journalist. He wrote numerous novels and plays.

Hermant was elected to the Académie française in 1927 , expelled in 1944 and sentenced to life imprisonment as a collaborator , but pardoned in 1948. He justified himself in the book Le Treizième cahier. Rêveries et souvenirs d'un philosophe proscrit (Paris 1949).

In Romance studies Abel Hermant is known as the author of the grammar of the Académie française (1932), which was panned by Ferdinand Brunot, and as the author of language-puristic publications, namely the language chronicles, which he published under the pseudonym Lancelot in the daily newspaper Le Temps (France) . As with André Thérive and André Moufflet , the scientific interest of his purist writings lies in the abundance of observations on the (passionately fought) change (diachrony) in language.

From 1940 he worked as an author for the newspaper Les Nouveaux Temps Jean Luchaires , which pursued an extreme pro-German propaganda course. After the end of the Second World War, Hermant was expelled from the Académie française on December 15, 1945 and sentenced to life imprisonment, but pardoned in 1948.

Works (language maintenance)

  • Entretiens sur la grammaire française. Paris 1923 (325 pages)
  • Xavier ou les Entretiens sur la grammaire française. Paris 1923 (272 pages), 55th edition 1928
  • Lettres à Xavier sur l'art d'écrire. Paris 1925, 1926
  • Remarques de M. Lancelot pour the defense of the French language. Paris 1929 (251 pages)
  • New remarques from M. Lancelot for the defense of the French language. Paris 1929 (285 pages)
  • La grammaire de l'Académie française. Discours prononcé à la séance publique des cinq académies le 25 octobre 1930. Paris 1930
  • Les samedis de monsieur Lancelot. Paris 1931
  • Ainsi parla Monsieur Lancelot. Le bon usage du français. Paris 1932
  • Grammaire de l'Académie française. Paris 1932
  • Savoir parler. Paris 1935
  • (Défense de la langue française) Chroniques de Lancelot, du "Temps" (Année 1933). Paris 1935 (1937) (580 pages)
  • (Defense de la langue française) Chroniques de Lancelot, du "Temps" (Années 1935-1936). Paris 1938 (1939) (376 pages)
  • (Defense de la langue française) Lancelot. 1937, Paris 1939 (237 pages)

literature

  • André Thérive : Essai sur Abel Hermant. Paris 1927
  • Ferdinand Brunot : Observations sur la Grammaire de l'Académie française. Paris 1932
  • Marie Girard de Villars: Anglicisms in André Maurois and Abel Hermant. Diss. Prague 1934
  • Hans Helmut Christmann : The French of the present. To his norm and his "Défense". In: The French Language Today. Edited by Franz Josef Hausmann , Darmstadt 1983, pp. 411–440

Web links

Commons : Abel Hermant  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French), accessed November 18, 2015.


personal data
SURNAME Hermant, Abel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer, journalist and linguist, member of the Académie française
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH September 29, 1950
Place of death Chantilly