Léon Fleuriot (5 April 1923 – 15 March 1987) was a French linguist and
Celtic scholar, specializing in
Celtic languages
The Celtic languages ( ) are a branch of the Indo-European language family, descended from the hypothetical Proto-Celtic language. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yve ...
and the history of Gallo-Roman and Early Medieval
Brittany
Brittany ( ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the north-west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica in Roman Gaul. It became an Kingdom of Brittany, independent kingdom and then a Duch ...
.
Biography
Born in
Morlaix
Morlaix (; , ) is a commune in the Finistère department of Brittany in northwestern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department.
History
The Battle of Morlaix, part of the Hundred Years' War, was fought near the town on 30 Septembe ...
, Brittany, in a family originating in the region of
Quintin and having studied
Breton in his youth, Fleuriot passed his university history ''
agrégation
In France, the () is the most competitive and prestigious examination for civil service in the French public education
A state school, public school, or government school is a primary school, primary or secondary school that educates all stu ...
'' in 1950. He taught at ''
lycée
In France, secondary education is in two stages:
* ''Collèges'' () cater for the first four years of secondary education from the ages of 11 to 14.
* ''Lycées'' () provide a three-year course of further secondary education for students between ...
s'' and ''
collèges'' in Paris and the surrounding suburbs, as well as at the
Prytanée National Militaire in
La Flèche. He entered the
Centre national de la recherche scientifique
The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe.
In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...
in 1958 and earned his doctorate at the
Sorbonne University
Sorbonne University () is a public research university located in Paris, France. The institution's legacy reaches back to the Middle Ages in 1257 when Sorbonne College was established by Robert de Sorbon as a constituent college of the Unive ...
in 1964, defending a thesis called ''Le vieux-breton, éléments d'une grammaire'' (''Old Breton, an Elementary Grammar''), along with a complementary thesis, ''Dictionnaire des gloses en vieux-breton'' (''Dictionary of Old Breton
Glosses'').
In 1966, Fleuriot was named chair of
Celtic studies
Celtic studies or Celtology is the academic discipline occupied with the study of any sort of cultural output relating to the Celts, Celtic-speaking peoples (i.e. speakers of Celtic languages). This ranges from linguistics, literature and art h ...
at the
University of Rennes 2 – Upper Brittany
Rennes 2 University (UR2; , officially Université Rennes-II Haute-Bretagne) is a public university located in Upper Brittany, France. It is one of the four universities of the List of public universities in France by academy#Academy of Rennes, A ...
in
Rennes
Rennes (; ; Gallo language, Gallo: ''Resnn''; ) is a city in the east of Brittany in Northwestern France at the confluence of the rivers Ille and Vilaine. Rennes is the prefecture of the Brittany (administrative region), Brittany Regions of F ...
, and at the same time as research director at the
École Pratique des Hautes Études
École or Ecole may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée)
* École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France
* Éco ...
in Paris. He contributed greatly to the growth of Breton language teaching at the university level.
Fleuriot's book ''Les origines de la Bretagne'' defended a "two wave" model of British immigration into Brittany and argued that the legend of
King Arthur
According to legends, King Arthur (; ; ; ) was a king of Great Britain, Britain. He is a folk hero and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain.
In Wales, Welsh sources, Arthur is portrayed as a le ...
arose from the life of Romano-British leader
Ambrosius Aurelianus
Ambrosius Aurelianus (; Anglicised as Ambrose Aurelian and called Aurelius Ambrosius in the ''Historia Regum Britanniae'' and elsewhere) was a war leader of the Romano-British who won an important battle against the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th c ...
, who was known in Gaul as
Riothamus. Fleuriot came into conflict with
François Falc'hun's claim that Breton was essentially native Gaulish, only influenced by the incoming British language. However, he accepted that Breton had been influenced by surviving local forms of Celtic.
[Glanville Price, ''The Celtic Connection'', Colin Smythe, 1994, p. 7]
Fleuriot died suddenly in Paris in 1987, aged 63, leaving much of his planned research unfinished.
Works
A bibliography has been established by
Gwennole ar Menn in ''Bretagne et pays celtiques, langues, histoire, civilisation'' (Skol, PUR, 1982), a collection of articles in honour of Léon Fleuriot.
* ''Le vieux breton: Éléments d'une grammaire''. Paris: Klincksieck, 1964.
* ''Dictionnaire des gloses en vieux breton''. Paris: Klincksieck, 1964.
** ''A Dictionary of Old Breton - Dictionnaire du vieux breton: Historical and Comparative, in two parts''. 2 vols. Toronto: Prepcorp, 1985. Part A reprints the '64 edn. while part B is a consensed, English-language version with some supplemental material.
*''Les origines de la Bretagne''. Paris: Payot, 1980.
*''Notes lexicographiques et philologiques'' (collection of articles published in the journal ''Études celtiques'', collected by Gwennole ar Menn), Skol, 1997.
* Articles in ''Annales de Bretagne, Bulletin de la Société archéologique du Finistère, Études celtiques, Hor Yezh.''
*''Récits et poèmes celtiques''. Paris: Stock, 1981.
*''L'histoire littéraire et culturelle de la Bretagne''. Vol. 1. Paris/Geneva, 1993.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fleuriot, Leon
1923 births
1987 deaths
People from Morlaix
University of Paris alumni
Academic staff of the École pratique des hautes études
Academic staff of Rennes 2 University
Historians of Brittany
French male non-fiction writers
Breton-speaking people
20th-century French historians
20th-century French linguists
20th-century French male writers