Françoise Le Roux (19 December 1927 – 23 December 2004) was a French historian of religions and Celticist. A pupil of Georges Dumézil, she specialised in the religion and mythology of the ancient Celts, which she interpreted within comparative Indo-European religion.^[1] She co-founded the Rennes journal Ogam, and with her husband Christian-Joseph Guyonvarc'h produced a large body of work on Celtic civilisation over some fifty years.^[1][2] Their revised edition of Les Druides received the Académie française's Prix Amic in 1980.^[3]

Life

Le Roux was born at Rennes on 19 December 1927, the daughter of the linguist Pierre Le Roux.^[1] She was drawn early to Breton and Celtic subjects and took a diploma at the École pratique des hautes études, where she was a pupil of Georges Dumézil.^[1] She became a specialist in the history of the Indo-European religions.^[1] In 1948 she was a co-founder of the journal Ogam, later Ogam-Tradition celtique.^[2]

She married the philologist and linguist Christian-Joseph Guyonvarc'h, a specialist in the medieval Irish texts and the Celtic languages, and the two worked together for some fifty years.^[1] Le Roux published about twenty books, alone or with Guyonvarc'h, and close to three hundred articles in specialist journals.^[1] The couple edited Ogam at Rennes and later at Cesson-Sévigné, and developed it into a publishing house.^[1] She died at Rennes on 23 December 2004.^[1]

Work

Le Roux's first book, Les Druides, appeared in 1961 in the Presses Universitaires de France series 'Mythes et religions'.^[1] A greatly enlarged edition, written with Guyonvarc'h, was published by Ogam-Celticum in 1978, and a further edition brought out by Éditions Ouest-France in 1986 was reprinted many times and translated into several European languages.^[1][4] Their other joint books include La Celtique, La Civilisation celtique, La Société celtique, Les Fêtes celtiques and La Souveraineté guerrière de l'Irlande: Mórrígan, Bodb, Macha.

Following Dumézil, Le Roux and Guyonvarc'h interpreted the Celtic evidence within comparative Indo-European religion and applied to it his trifunctional analysis.^[1] Reviewing several of their books in Études irlandaises in 1981, Pierre Joannon commended the scale of the undertaking and the way it made accessible a mass of texts known only to specialists.^[4]

Recognition

In 1980 the revised Les Druides brought Le Roux and Guyonvarc'h the Prix Amic of the Académie française.^[3][4]

Selected publications

• Les Druides. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1961. Revised and enlarged edition, with Christian-J. Guyonvarc'h, Rennes: Ogam-Celticum, 1978. Further edition, Rennes: Éditions Ouest-France, 1986. ISBN 2-85882-920-9.
• Introduction générale à l'étude de la tradition celtique, I. Rennes: Ogam-Tradition celtique, 1967.
• with Christian-J. Guyonvarc'h, La Celtique. Rennes: Ogam-Celticum, 1979.
• with Christian-J. Guyonvarc'h, La Souveraineté guerrière de l'Irlande: Mórrígan, Bodb, Macha. Rennes: Ogam-Celticum, 1983.
• with Christian-J. Guyonvarc'h, La Civilisation celtique. Rennes: Ogam-Tradition celtique, 1986. New edition, Éditions Ouest-France, 1990. Paris: Payot, 2001.
• with Christian-J. Guyonvarc'h, La Société celtique: dans l'idéologie trifonctionnelle et la tradition religieuse indo-européennes. Rennes: Éditions Ouest-France, 1991. ISBN 2-7373-0902-6.
• with Christian-J. Guyonvarc'h, Les Fêtes celtiques. Rennes: Éditions Ouest-France, 1995.
• with Christian-J. Guyonvarc'h, La Légende de la ville d'Is. Rennes: Éditions Ouest-France, 2000. ISBN 2-7373-1413-5.

She also contributed to the Dictionnaire des symboles, edited by Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant (1969).^[1]

References

External links

• "Françoise Le Roux (1927–2004)". PRELIB (in French). Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Celtique.