Richelieu price

The Prix Richelieu is a literary prize decreed by Défense association of the French language.

This price was created in 1992 at the time of the fortieth birthday of the foundation of the Cercle of press Richelieu. Sponsored by the General delegation with the French language and the Larousse editions, it rewards a journalist who “will have testified by quality to his own language, for his concern of defending the French language”.

Among its prizes winner: Philippe Meyer, Renaud Matignon, Jean Lebrun, Franz-Olivier Giesbert and Bruno de Cessole (2000)

The purpose of the Circle of Richelieu press, created in 1952 by Paul Camus, Georges Duhamel, Jules Romans and Jean Cocteau is the conservation and the expansion of the linguistic and cultural inheritance as well as the maintenance of quality and the evolution of the French language in the modern world. It was chaired by the academicians Leon Bérard, Maurice Genevoix, Jean Mistler and Jean Dutourd.

During its creation, Paul Camus had declared: the majority of the French recognize that their language is corrupted, but much think that one can nothing there. They are comforted by thinking that after all French did not cease evolving/moving, and that the bad use of today is perhaps only the good use of tomorrow. To fight this resignation will be the first task of our Association. (...) It will have to recall that the value of a language is measured by its aptitude to return exactly the thought in all its nuances. (...) the French language, abandoned with the bad use, will lose the rigor of its syntax, the richness and the right use of its times and its modes, the precision of its vocabulary, i.e. qualities which made it prefer.

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