Citation littéraire et méthode lexicographique dans 'Lesclarcissement de la langue francoyse' (1530)

Antedating the dictionaries of Nicot, John Palsgrave's grammar-dictionary was a pioneering work in the use of illustrative examples and vernacular literary citations. Unfortunately we do not know Palsgrave's procedure for the collection of citations, and we do not possess his original source volumes. To verify his citations I have relied then on various published versions of the works cited by him. Without marked-up originals, I have used different methods for locating citations in the source texts, including a computerized search of two of the larger works. This has become possible in recent years through the advent of sophisticated scanning and searching software and its availability to scholars in the humanities. Using these technologies I have located over 200 of Palsgrave's unreferenced and incompletely referenced citations. I have found in many cases significant differences between the author's original wording and Palsgrave's excerption of it. I maintain that this variation is intentional on Palsgrave's part, and that he adapts the text primarily for reasons of brevity and simplicity, concerns felt by many subsequent lexicographers. The purpose of this study is first to examine the various ways in which Palsgrave modified his citations, and second to contribute to the development of a standard terminology for this kind of study