Bernard Jullien


Bernard Jullien was a French teacher, novelist and linguist.

Life

Jullien went to school in Versailles and began his teaching career at the Collège Sainte-Barbe. He then taught in Dieppe and finally Paris. In 1836 he graduated from the Sorbonne under Joseph Victor Leclerc with a thesis on Aristotle's Physics and Sur l'étude et l'enseignement de la grammaire. He later also earned a degree in natural sciences.
Jullien was most notable as an author of grammatical and literary textbooks for schools for the publisher Louis Hachette. As associates of that publishing house he and Édouard Sommer also helped Émile Littré create his dictionary. From 1840 Jullien edited the journal L'Enseignement. Bulletin d'éducation and from 1843 to 1850 he was the editor of Revue de l'instruction publique. From 1854 he was also the chief editor of the monthly Le Correspondant.
Nostalgic for the First French Empire and an anti-Romantic thinker, he preferred 18th century Age of Enlightenment rationalism and so could not gain a foothold on the university career ladder before the rise of the French Second Empire - as seen in the preface to his 1844 Histoire, he felt himself unfairly treated. His thinking and wide reading fully developed under Napoleon III in six extensive theses on grammar, literature, history, and philosophy and was more devoted to clarity than originality.

Works

Main works