Littré, Émile (1801-81). French historian of medicine, philosopher, linguist, philologist, and translator, best known for his Dictionnaire de la langue française (1863-72, Supplement 1877), a landmark in the history of French lexicography [see Dictionaries].
Littré studied first medicine, then Greek, Sanskrit, and Arabic. He became a disciple, but not a slavish follower, of Auguste Comte. Independent of Comte in his political thinking, Littré remained a Positivist, helping to disseminate Comte's ideas in such works as Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive (1863) and La Science au point de vue philosophique (1873).
Littré's dictionary records contemporary usage, but conceived in the broadest sense as dating from Malherbe on. The dictionary's greatest originality lies in the extensive use of citations, both in the definitions and in the entries' historical content. Typically, older authors, especially 17th-c. ones, are preferred and 19th-c. writers, notably those post-1830, are neglected. Littré equally adopts a relatively conservative stance, including many archaic, technical, and dialectal terms in his word lists, but being more selective in his inclusion of neologisms. This attitude relaxes somewhat in the Supplement.
Littré also published works on the history of the French language (1862) and semantic change (1888). His translations include versions of Hippocrates (1839-61) and of Strauss's La Vie de Jésus (1839-50), Dante's Inferno (1879), and Pliny's Histoire naturelle (1848-50).
[<auth>Wendy Ayres-Bennett]
