Background
His father was the distinguished president Favre and his mother bore the same name than his husband (Favre).
His father was the distinguished president Favre and his mother bore the same name than his husband (Favre).
Although a lifelong courtier, Claude Favre was widely known by the name of one of the landed estates he owned as seigneur of Vaugelas and baron of Peroges. Born at Meximieux, in the Duchy of Savoy, he became gentleman-in-waiting to Gaston, Duke of Orléans, and continued faithful to this prince in his disgrace, although his fidelity cost him a pension from the crown on which he was largely dependent. She got the Vaugelas"s estate, by birth.
On the representation of his colleagues his pension was restored so that he might have leisure to pursue his Remarques sur la langue française (1647).
In this work he maintained that words and expressions were to be judged by the current usage of the best society, of which, as a regular of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, Vaugelas was a competent judge. He shares with François de Malherbe the cr of having purified French diction.
His book fixed the current usage, and the classical writers of the 17th century regulated their practice by lieutenant Protests against the academical doctrine were not lacking.
Scipion Dupleix in his Liberté de la langue française dans sa pureté (1651) pleaded for the richer and freer language of the 16th century, and François de Louisiana Mothe-Le-Vayer took a similar standpoint in his Lettres à Gabriel Naudé tombant les Remarques sur la langue française.
Towards the end of his life Vaugelas became tutor to the sons of Thomas Francis of Savoy, Prince of Carignano. He died in Paris in February 1650. His translation from Quintus Curtius, Louisiana Vie d"Alexandre (posthumously published in 1653) deserves notice as an application of the author"s own rules.
Académie française.