Le Mémoire de 1664 ou le Psautier face au « tyran des langues »

Guillaume Peureux

Abstract

In 1664 Laurent Drelincourt sent to Isaiah II Colladon several documents, including his famous Mémoire. This extremely meticulous set of documents prompted the pastors of Geneva to begin the work of updating the Bible and in particular the Psalter. Relying on principles specific to the grammarians of the time, Drelincourt envisaged the revision of the psalter as a linguistic and poetic project, indexed on the idea of usage, which he presented as the “tyrant of languages”. The liturgical and theological issues were overtaken and surpassed by issues relating to the elegance of the language of verse, which in our opinion reveals the militant dimension of Drelincourt’s approach. It was a question of renewing the texts and giving them fashionable poetic appeal, in order to rival the Catholic psalms while at the same time giving the Protestant Psalter the means to seduce a wider audience.

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