ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Petrus Ramus' own struggle in favour of the vernacular in his case, in favour of French which the author tries to situate in the context which gave rise to it. Philipp Melanchthon, for instance, wrote in a private letter that Ramus had a marked tendency to sing his own praise, in a way so very typical of the French'. Petrus Ramus and his brother' Omer Talon appear on the Parisian stage in the early 1540s and were immediately able to draw considerable attention to themselves by attacking rather forcefully the major ancient authorities in the entire field of the liberal arts. Ramus' enthusiasm for vernacular culture would seem to be just an example of an open spirit'. Ramus offered a convenient justification of his pedagogical efforts, in so far as the battle for his mother tongue was now firmly grounded in his reconstruction of the history of Western civilisation.
