Le champ lexical Science-Littérature en français et en allemand

Ulrich Ricken : The lexical field «science — literature » in french and german. The modern notion of literature had its origin in France in the middle of the 18th Century, before it appeared in Germany. The development of the meaning of littérature as seen in French dictionaires is similar to that seen for Wissenschaften in German. The lexical field of littérature is determined by the synonyms science, érudition, lettres, belles-lettres. The main development is the semantic differentiation which gradually separated littérature and lettres from science and from érudition. This development is not to be found in dictionaries, but rather in the titles of literary periodicals in France and Germany. In Germany, the word Literatur appeared in the 1760s, while Schöne Wissenschaften declined thereafter, before its equivalent in French — belles-lettres.Ricken Ulrich. Le champ lexical Science-Littérature en français et en allemand. In: Dix-huitième Siècle, n°10, 1978. Qu'est-ce que les Lumières ? pp. 33-43