L’Abbe Charles Michel de l’Epee

Contact: Dr. Karen Dilka
Eastern Kentucky University
• Date submitted to deafed.net – February 27,
2006
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L’Abbe
Charles Michel
de l’Epee
“The Father of the Deaf”
1712 - 1789
Early Life Events
• Born November
24th, 1712, father
was a royal architect
• Became a lawyer at
age 21
• In 1738, at age 26,
takes his vows as a
priest, is now known
as L’Abbe de l’Epee
Beginning Deaf Work
In 1760, began to teach two
teenage deaf girls for fear
of their spiritual void from
a faith transmitted by the
sense of hearing.
He used Bonnet’s “The
Pronunciation of the
letters and the art of
teaching deaf and mute to
speak” as a guide.
That same year, he started a
shelter for the deaf in
Paris.
Contributions to the Education
of the Deaf
• Founded the first free public educational
institution, the National Institute for Deaf Mutes,
in Paris in 1771; the first school for the Deaf in
the world.
• Helped to bring recognition to the use of sign
language.
• Showed that sign language was a natural
language and the Deaf were equal to all others.
Contributions continued
• Gave the Deaf the opportunity to learn a
trade in addition to the French language.
• He began writing a dictionary before his
death, which published in its entirety in
1896.
• Unlike other educators of the Deaf at the
time, de l’Epee shared his methods of
teaching. He published several papers and
books.
The National Institute
for Deaf Mutes
• Students were taught a
trade in addition to the
French language.
• This was Laurent
Clerc’s first school.
• L’Abbe RochAmbroise Sicard took
over after de l’Epee’s
death.
de l’Epee’s Legacy
“Before him, we were nothing;
we were pariahs, plunged into chaos and
ignorance, marginals, and ignored;
now we exist;
we have been restored to society.”
Common Deaf banquet toast
of the nineteenth century
Caution
L’Abbe de l’Epee did not invent
French Sign Language. He did
however take the existing signs
from the Parisian Deaf. He
added the grammar of the
French language and a structure
for the teaching of the language.
Resources
Fisher, Renate. “Abbe de l’Epee and the Living Dictionary” in Deaf History
Unveiled: Interpretations from the New Scholarship. John Vickrey Van Cleve,
ed. Gallaudet University Press, Washington, D.C. 1993, pp. 13 - 26.
Laurent Clerc (VT), DeBee Communications, 1995.
Members.aol.com/lbox7272/deaf_history.htm
Mottez, Bernard. “The Deaf-Mute Banquets and the Birth of the Deaf
Movement” in Deaf History Unveiled: Interpretations from the New
Scholarship. John Vickrey Van Cleve, ed. Gallaudet University Press,
Washington, D.C. 1993, pp. 27 - 39.
Van Cleve, John V., ed. Gallaudet Encyclopedia of Deaf People and Deafness.
McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.: St. Louis, 1987.
When the Mind Hears: Chapter 1: My New Family (VT), Sign Media, Inc. 1993.
When the Mind Hears: Exclusive Interview with Harlan Lane (VT), Sign Media,
Inc. 1995.
www.gallaudet.edu/~mssdlrc/clerc/
www.nyx.net/~sbechtel/isrid/terp/deaf_history.html#1790’s
www.ksl.g.se/e05lepee.html

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