One of the challenges with my current project on Indo-European thought in France is how male-dominated it is. If you look at a photograph of the professors of the Collège de France in 1967, you can perhaps see why. It wasn’t much better at the Collège de France almost 20 years later (1985).

In fields related to those I’m studying for this project, it’s interesting that the first female professor of the Collège de France was Jacqueline de Romilly (1913-2010), elected to a chair with the title Greece and the Formation of Moral and Political Thought [La Grèce et la formation de la pensée morale et politique] in 1973. I think that the second was Françoise Héritier (1933-2017), who was elected a whole decade later. She succeeded Claude Lévi-Strauss, with a chair in the Comparative Study of African Societies [Étude comparée des sociétés africaines] in 1983. So far, neither of them has featured in the work I’m doing, though both have connections to those people whose careers I am exploring.

Of course, the Collège de France is an elite institution, and there are all kinds of complicated politics in terms of who gets elected. But even looking at other major institutions shows a clear gender imbalance. There are many interesting figures who connect to the story I’m trying to tell, but relatively few women and it can be difficult to find out much information about them.

Of an earlier generation, Marie-Louise Sjoestedt is particularly intriguing. She was born on 20 September 1900. Her father was a Swedish diplomat based in France and her mother was a novelist from Corsica. Her older sister was the artist Yvonne Sjoestedt. She was part of the impressive generation of students taught by Antoine Meillet in the 1920s, alongside Pierre Chantraine, Jerzy Kuryłowicz, Louis Renou, Emile Benveniste and – slightly more distantly – Georges Dumézil. Her husband Michel Jonval, also a linguist with a specialisation in Baltic languages, died young in 1935, just three years after they married. Meillet said this generation was remarkable in that it was clear that many of them would soon be masters themselves.

Sjoestedt died at the age of just 40 by suicide, not long after the French defeat and the arrest of her second husband by the Germans. In a brief biography Renou says that there had been several previous attempts (p. 11). Dumézil acknowledges her death in the second edition of his Mitra-Varuna in a somewhat guarded way: “she was not to survive France’s first misfortunes” (p. xxxvii). 

Sjoestedt was the author of several technical works on the Welsh and Irish languages, including L’aspect verbal et les formations à affixe nasale en celtique, which appeared when she was just 25. It was her primary doctoral thesis, defended in June 1926. Renou says that Meillet was the rapporteur for this thesis; Joseph Vendryes for the secondary thesis on a Middle Irish Saga, ‘The siege of Druim Damhghaire’ (p. 6). Natalie Zemon Davis says Vendryes directed the first thesis, which seems likely. Vendryes worked on Latin and Celtic, and taught alongside Meillet at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE). In time, Sjoestedt, Benveniste, Dumézil, Chantraine and other Meillet students would teach at the EPHE too. Sjoestedt taught there between 1926 and 1928, in a temporary post, and then Greek at the University of Rennes in Brittany, before a post in Celtic languages was created for her at the EPHE in 1929 (Renou pp. 7-8; see Pierre-Yves Lambert’s entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography).

Sjoestedt spent a lot of time in Ireland and Wales, and produced a two-volume study of Irish dialects – Phonétique d’un parler irlandais de Kerry (1931) and Description d’un parler irlandais de Kerry (1938) – building on then innovative research on phonology. She also worked on Celtic mythology, especially the legend of Cuchulainn, and her Dieux et héros des Celtes (1940) was intended for a much wider audience. It was translated by her former student Myles Dillon as Gods and Heroes of the Celts after her death. 

Sjoestedt was one of the editors of Études celtiques, alongside Vendryes. She attended some of Dumézil’s classes on mythology in the 1930s, but he recalls that he was also her student, as she taught him Welsh and Irish. Dumézil said that his aim was to gain the ability to read myths in those languages, not to be able to speak the modern versions. He did, however, later spend some time in Bangor in North Wales. Dumézil references Sjoestedt’s work in Mitra-Varuna, dedicates Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus to her memory, and as noted above, in the preface to the second edition mentions her as one of his students and colleagues lost in the war.

Natalie Zemon Davis, in a valuable essay on “Women and the World of the Annales” situates Sjoestedt in relation to a wider intellectual network. Much of her discussion covers the story outlined above, but is based on a reading of sources in the Annuaire of the EPHE as well:

Joining [Germaine] Rouillard at the Ecole Pratique in 1926 and under like auspices was a young woman whose family was of Swedish origin, Marie-Louise Sjoestedt. She had published her doctoral thesis that year, a technical linguistic study directed by the great Celtic specialist at the Sorbonne, Joseph Vendryes. Vendryes had just taken over the Celtic program at the Ecole Pratique and brought Sjoestedt along as Chargie de conferences to teach both middle and modern Irish. She continued to work as his associate over the years: in 1936, when the Etudes Celtiques were founded (published by Eugénie Droz), Vendryes was the editor and Sjoestedt was the Secretaire de la Rédaction, while writing reviews and articles for the journal. But, a Directeur d’études from 1930 on, she also developed on her own, marrying a fellow linguist who worked on Baltic languages and Latvian myth, discussing linguistic matters with her colleague at the Ecole, Emile Benveniste, and returning often to Ireland for field work in language and folklore. In 1938, she reviewed a new History of Ireland for the Annales. Her important book on the structure of Celtic myths about gods and heroes was under press as the Germans invaded France. She committed suicide in early December 1940 at age forty; her Dieux et héros des Celtes appeared a few weeks later. 

Reviewing the book in the first Annales to appear under the Occupation, [Lucien] Febvre praised Sjoestedt’s ‘remarkable knowledge of the languages, beliefs and customs of the Celtic world’ and regretted that she was gone when so much was still to be expected from her labour.

Natalie Zemon Davis, “Women and the World of the Annales”, History Workshop Journal, 1992, 126-27, see 134-35, n. 34.

A collection of tributes – including ones by Benveniste and Dumézil and a brief biography by Louis Renou – was published in 1941: Marie-Louise Sjoestedt (1900–1940). In Memoriam. Vendryes’s obituary was published in Études Celtiques in 1948. As far as I’m aware, there is no archive of her papers available.

References

Marie-Louise Sjoestedt (1900–1940). In Memoriam, suivi de Essai sur une littérature nationale, la littérature irlandaise contemporaine, Paris: E. Droz, 1941. 

Georges Dumézil, Mitra-Varuna: An Essay on Two Indo-European Representations of Sovereignty, trans. Derek Coltman, ed. Stuart Elden, Chicago: Hau, 2024.

Lucien Febvre, “Histoire des Religions: une nouvelle collection”, Annales d’histoire sociale 3, 1941, 98-99.

Pierre-Yves Lambert, “Sjoestedt (-Jonval), Marie-Louise”, Dictionary of Irish Biography, https://www.dib.ie/biography/sjoestedt-jonval-marie-louise-a8102

Seán Ó Lúing, “Marie-Louise Sjoestedt, Celtic Scholar (1900-1940)”, Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society 20 (1987), 79-93.

Louis Renou, “Notice biographique”, in Marie-Louise Sjoestedt (1900–1940). In Memoriam, 3-11.

Marie-Louise Sjoestedt, L’Aspect verbal et les formations à affixe nasal en celtique, Paris: Librarie Ancienne Honoré Champion, 1926.

Marie-Louise Sjoestedt, Phonétique d’un parler irlandais de Kerry, Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1931.

Marie-Louise Sjœstedt-Jonval, “Légendes épiques Irlandaises et monnaies gauloises: recherches sur la constitution de la légende de Cuchulainn”, Études Celtiques I, 1936, 1-77.

Marie-Louise Sjoestedt, Description d’un parler irlandais de Kerry, Paris: Honoré Champion, 1938.

Marie-Louise Sjoestedt, Dieux et héros des Celtes, Paris: PUF, 1940; Celtic Gods and Heroes trans. Myles Dillon, New York: Dover, 2000 [1949].

Joseph Vendryes, “Nécrologie: Marie-Louise Sjoestedt”, Études Celtiques 4 (2), 1948, 428-33.

Natalie Zemon Davis, “Women and the World of the Annales“, History Workshop Journal 33, 1992, 121-37.

—-

This is a revised and expanded version of a post from May 2023. It is the fourth post of an occasional series, where I try to post short essays with some indications of further reading and sources, but which are not as formal as something I’d try to publish more conventionally. They are usually tangential to my main writing focus, a home for spare ideas, asides, dead-ends and possible futures. I hope there is some interest in them. They are provisional and suggestions are welcome. The other posts so far are:

Benveniste, Dumézil, Lejeune and the decipherment of Linear B – 5 January 2025

Foucault’s 1972 visit to Cornell University – 12 January 2025 (updated 14 January)

Benveniste and the Linguistic Circle of Prague – 19 January 2025

Thomas Sebeok, Umberto Eco and the Semiotics of Nuclear Waste – 2 February 2025

Vladimir Nabokov, Roman Jakobson, Marc Szeftel and The Song of Igor – 9 February 2025

Ernst Kantorowicz and the California Loyalty Oath – 16 February 2025

The full list of ‘Sunday histories’ is here.