Du Marsais, César Chesneau, sieur (1676-1756). He wrote on religious and philosophical topics, but is remembered as a grammarian, author of many articles on language in the Encyclopédie and of the posthumous Logique et principes de grammaire (1769). His philosophical, somewhat eclectic, theory of language stresses the universal validity of ‘natural’ word order. In opposition to this, figurative and poetic language is seen as expressive, emotive, or decorative. The recent revival of rhetoric has focused attention on his Traité des tropes (1730), which offers a theory of the origin and proper (i.e. discreet) use of tropes, of which he lists 19 species. His work was continued by Fontanier.
[Peter France]
