Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's 'Explication de quelques termes de marine' (1773).

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Voyage à l'île de France (1773), his first publication, contains near its end a curious segment which has received scant critical attention. This 'Explication' undertakes to elucidate maritime terms used in his travel narrative. Such short alphabetical glossaries, constituting in effect a subgenre of the nautical dictionary, appear in other voyage accounts of the period. But Bernardin begins by announcing that he has added to his explications of terms 'des étymologies', which are moreover 'point sçavantes, mais conformes à l'esprit du peuple [...] qui donne le nom aux choses'. This article argues that these allegedly popular etymologies, largely invented by Bernardin (who invokes Rabelais), are in the main to be read as ludic and satirical. Playing with 'the body of the word', employing fragmentation and punning, they mock both erudite and demotic derivations of terms. But the etymologies of the people also show that names contain their own meaning, establishing a comic Cratylism. The playful mode of this early piece allows Bernardin to adumbrate daring ideas while keeping them at an ironic distance. Taken seriously and attributed to Providence, the notion of an immanent signification in language, as in nature, exhibited to humankind, will be developed in later works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]