Taming the tongue: John Palsgrave and the Renaissance of English

Abstract

John Palsgrave’s Lesclaircissement de la langue françoyse (1530) is more than its first French grammar in English: it is a comparative enterprise that frames French and English as autonomous systems, with Latin reduced to a background grid. By foregrounding structural asymmetries – obligatory subject pronouns, determiners and the partitive, unstable gender – Palsgrave converts friction into pedagogy. His categories (mean verbs, common and doubtful gender) exemplify both descriptive acuity and instructional design, while the extensive Vocabularius anticipates bilingual lexicography. Set against Sylvius, Ramus and Meigret, the Lesclaircissement emerges as a landmark in Renaissance grammaticography and a decisive move towards learner-oriented contrastive description.