Language and the National Past in Napoleonic France: Reassessing the Académie celtique, 1805–1813

Abstract

Abstract This article reassesses the Académie celtique (1805–13), an antiquarian society concerned with investigating the origins of the French nation, and the progenitor of the current Société nationale des antiquaires de France. While most prior scholarship has focused on the Académie as an innovator in the field of French folklore studies, it is argued here that the Académie’s main scholarly concern was with language, specifically the use of historical linguistic research for tracing the origins of European nations. Underpinning the Académie’s research programme was a belief that the ancient Celts—based in Gaul—once dominated Europe and spoke a language from which most European tongues descended, and was perhaps preserved in modern Breton. The article therefore also presents a coherent view of the importance of Celtic ancestry for the developing French nation in the early nineteenth century.