Category Archives: Antoine Meillet

Roman Jakobson’s two series of 1972 lectures at the Collège de France – dating, topics and archival traces, and his friendships with Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan

Posted on August 31, 2025 by stuartelden

In Stephen Rudy’s chronology of Roman Jakobson’s career, the entry for 1972 reads, in part:  Visiting Professor, Collège de France, Dec. […] Professeur d’état, Collège de France. Four lectures, Feb. 3-8. How many lectures did he give across the visits, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Antoine Meillet, Étienne Wolff, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Émile Benveniste and the Sogdian Word for ‘Knee’

Posted on April 27, 2025 by stuartelden

This was written for an event on ‘Troubling Classical Bodies‘ at the Remarque Institute at New York University on 11 April 2025. My thanks to Stefanos Geroulanos and Brooke Holmes for the invitation to give this short talk, and to … Continue reading →

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Elisabeth Raucq, animal names and approaches to Indo-European vocabulary

Posted on April 13, 2025 by stuartelden

In the preface to the second edition of his Mitra-Varuna, Georges Dumézil mentions some of the people who attended the lecture course which became the book. Delivered at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 1938-39, this was the last year … Continue reading →

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

The Territory of the Vocabulary and the Vocabulary of Territory: Emile Benveniste 

Posted on March 30, 2025 by stuartelden

If I was writing The Birth of Territory again, I would certainly have found a little space for a brief discussion of Émile Benveniste and his Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, now available in English again as the Dictionary of Indo-European Concepts and Society and open access … Continue reading →

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Reinhart Koselleck, Sunday Histories, Territory, Terror and Territory, The Birth of Territory | 6 Comments

Marie-Louise Sjoestedt (1900-1940): an important scholar of Celtic languages and mythology

Posted on January 26, 2025 by stuartelden

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Sunday Histories | 15 Comments

Benveniste and the Linguistic Circle of Prague

Posted on January 19, 2025 by stuartelden

There are some good histories of the Linguistic Circle of Prague, which met in the years before the Second World War, and which included Russian scholars as well as ones from Czechoslovakia. Jindřich Toman’s The Magic of a Common Language is a particularly … Continue reading →

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Books received – Dumézil, Koyré, Delaporte, Felsch, Febvre, Meillet

Posted on October 24, 2024 by stuartelden

Some second-hand books by dead French men bought recently, and Philipp Felsch’s How Nietzsche Came in From the Cold, translated by Daniel Bowles. The second and third books are translations by Alexandre Koyré, and the top book is a copy … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Antoine Meillet, François Delaporte, Friedrich Nietzsche, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Books received – Koyré, Meillet, Rose, Barry, Moyn

Posted on September 5, 2024 by stuartelden

Some recently bought second-hand books, including Gillian Rose’s The Broken Middle, James Barry, Measures of Science, and Samuel Moyn, Origins of the Other: Emmanuel Levinas between Revelation and Ethics. Top of the pile is a first edition of Alexandre Koyré’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Antoine Meillet, Emmanuel Levinas, Gillian Rose, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France | 1 Comment

Books received – Koyré, Meillet, Benveniste, Canguilhem, Foucault

Posted on August 15, 2024 by stuartelden

Bought new or second-hand for various projects, along with the new collection of previously unpublished material by Foucault, sent by the publisher – Nietzsche: Cours, conférences et travaux, edited by Bernard Harcourt.

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Antoine Meillet, Bernard E. Harcourt, Emile Benveniste, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault | 1 Comment