Pierre Jean-Baptiste Legrand d'Aussy

Pierre Jean-Baptiste Legrand d'Aussy (born June 3, 1737 in Amiens , † December 6, 1800 in Paris ) was a French historian, Romanist and Medievalist .

life and work

Legrand entered the Jesuit order in Amiens in 1753. After his training he taught rhetoric at the Jesuit College in Caen , but the Jesuits were banished from Normandy in 1762 and Legrand went to Paris. He was secretary of the Direction des études at the École militaire (military academy), and until 1779 a tutor in Paris.

In Paris he worked for Jean-Baptiste de La Curne de Sainte-Palaye , the lexicographer of Old French , as well as the Marquis de Paulmy and Louis-Élisabeth de la Vergne de Tressan , which was made from the treasures of Paulmy's private library (later Bibliothèque de l 'Arsenal ) edited the Bibliothèque universelle des romans in 112 volumes (Paris 1777–1789, with the assistance of Charles-Joseph Mayer ), as well as Paulmy's Mélanges tirés d'une grande bibliothèque in 69 volumes (1779–1787, many contributions by Legrand and André -Guillaume Contant d'Orville [1730-1800]).

Legrand fell out with Paulmy when he wanted to publish Legrand's work on the Fabliaux under his own name. His book about the troubadours , in which he defended the literature of northern France against the "Provençalists", got caught up in a polemic between the supporters of the "Trouvères" and those of the "Troubadours". His historical research into private life was so ahead of its time that it was laughed at in France and only valued abroad.

His account of the trip through the Auvergne made in 1787 was translated into German. From 1795 he was curator of the national library and member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques .

Works

• (Ed.) Fabliaux ou Contes des douzième et treizième siècles, traduits ou extraits d'après les manuscrits , 3 vols., Paris 1779, Geneva 1971
  • (Ed.) Contes dévots, Fables et Romans anciens , Paris 1781
  • (Ed.) Fabliaux ou contes, fables et romans du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle , 5 vols., Paris 1781, 3rd edition, Paris 1829
  • Tales from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with historical and critical notes , translated and edited. by Samuel Christian Lütkemüller , 5 vols., Halle 1795–1798
  • Tales of the XIIth and XIIIth centuries , trans. by John Williamson, 2 vols., London 1786
  • "Fabliaux" or tales abridged from French manuscripts, of the XIIth and XIIIth centuries , translated by Gregory Lewis Way [1757–1799] and ed. by George Ellis [1753–1815], 3 vols., London 1796–1800, 1815
• Observations sur les troubadours , Paris 1781
• Histoire de la vie privée des Français depuis l'origine de la nation jusqu'à nos jours , Paris 1782, 1815, 1824; 2 vols., Chilly-Mazarin 1999–2000 (German excerpt: An attempt at a history of fruit growing in France , Frankfurt am Main 1800)
• Voyage d'Auvergne , Paris 1788
  • Voyage fait en 1787–1788 dans la ci-devant Haute et Basse Auvergne , Paris L'an III (1795), Roanne 1982
  • Travels through Auvergne , ed. by Heinrich Friedrich Link , Göttingen 1797
• Mémoire sur les anciennes sépultures nationales et les ornemens extérieurs qui en divers temps y furent employés, sur les embaumemens, sur les tombeaux des rois francs dans la ci-devant église de Saint-Germain des Prés, et sur un projet de fouilles à faire dans nos Départements, in: Mémoires de l'Institut national des sciences et arts 2, 1799, pp. 411–680

literature

• Pierre Jean-Baptiste Legrand d'Aussy, La vie d'Apollonius de Tyane , Paris 1807 (with a biographical note by Pierre-Charles Levesque )
• Joseph Marie Quérard , La France littéraire , Paris 1833, pp. 109–110
• Jan Frans Willems (ed.), Le roman du Renard , traduit pour la première fois d'après un texte flamand du xiie siècle, augmenté d'une analyze de ce qu'ont écrit au sujet des romans français du Renard, Legrand-d 'Aussy, Robert, Raynouard, Saint-Marc Girardin, Prosper Marchand, etc. par Octave Delepierre , Brussels 1837
• Geoffrey Wilson, A medievalist in the eighteenth century. Le Grand d'Aussy and the "Fabliaux ou contes" , The Hague 1975

Web links

• Literature by and about Pierre Jean-Baptiste Legrand d'Aussy in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)