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During the eighteenth century, from the death of Louis XIV until the Revolution, French culture set the standard for all of Europe. In Sweden, Austria, Italy, Spain, England, Russia, and Germany, among kings and queens, diplomats, military leaders, writers, aristocrats, and artists, French was the universal language of politics and intellectual life. In?When the World Spoke French, Marc Fumaroli presents a gallery of portraits of Europeans and Americans who conversed and corresponded in French, along with excerpts from their letters or other writings.
These men and women, despite their differences, were all irresistibly attracted to the ideal of human happiness inspired by the Enlightenment, whose capital was Paris and whose king was Voltaire. Whether they were in Paris or far away, speaking French connected them in spirit with all those who desired to emulate Parisian tastes, style of life, and social pleasures. Their stories are testaments to the appeal of that famous ?sweetness of life? nourished by France and its language.
Editorial Reviews
?In the 18th century, French was the language of culture and diplomacy, uniquely suited to express the wit and style of mainly European political, social, and literary luminaries, according to veteran French scholar Fumaroli.?Letters and memoirs composed in French from major figures like Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine the Great of Russia, along with relative unknowns like Neapolitan Abb? Galiani or American Gouverneur Morris, map a trail from the enlightened salons of Paris to the partition of Poland by Prussia, Russia, and Austria in the 18th century?.The smooth translation by Pulitzer winner Howard facilitates appreciation of the witty writers?.Whether randomly selecting a chapter or treating the book as a saga sweeping inexorably toward the Polish debacle and the French Reign of Terror, readers cannot fail to find their own enlightenment in these gems.? ? ?Publishers Weekly
?The names read like a Who?s Who: the Viscount Bolingbroke and Lord Chesterfield of England, Prince Eugene of Savoy, Frederick the Great and Frederick Melchoir Grimm of Prussia/Germany, Catherine the Great of Russia, Gustavus III of Sweden, Benjamin Franklin and Gouverneur Morris of the United States, Stanislas II of Poland, to mention only ten of them.?
?Freeman G. Henry,?Language, Culture, and Hegemony in Modern France
When French Was the Language of Enlightenment
The New York Times Book Review ? July 8, 2011 (Excerpt)
A few months ago, WikiLeaks? publication of confidential cables from American embassies around the world inspired a mock news item headlined??Sarkozy Admits French Language a Hoax.? According to this report, France?s diplomatic missives were revealed to have been written in English, leading the French president to confess that ?the French really speak English, except in the presence of the British.? He went on to explain that the French language ?was in fact complete gibberish,? invented by William the Conqueror?s troops during their invasion of England in order to ?seem a bit more exotic? to the locals.
Whatever its humor value, this absurdist scenario underscores the degree to which English has eclipsed French as the international idiom of choice. With his magisterial study, ?When the World Spoke French,? Marc Fumaroli harks back to a time when the situation was exactly the reverse. In the 18th century, he shows, ?the international community of the learned? tended ?to speak, write and publish mostly in French.? Whether they hailed from Russia or Prussia, Sweden or Spain, Austria or America, the Enlightenment?s best minds gravitated to French out of their shared reverence for both the matchless sophistication of the French?art de vivre and the spirited intellectual exchanges of the Parisian salon.
To Fumaroli, an eminent scholar of French classical rhetoric and a member of the Acad?mie Fran?aise, the adoption of the French language necessarily entailed the absorption of a whole system of cultural values. Like the Ciceronian Latin favored by the intellectuals of the Renaissance, 18th-century French ?was a language in itself inconvenient, difficult, aristocratic and literary,? inseparable from ?a?bon ton in manners, from a certain bearing in society, and from a quality of wit, nourished on literature, in conversation.? Notwithstanding the radical role it would eventually play in the French and American Revolutions, the language of Enlightenment liberalism and universalism paradoxically evinced the finest qualities of the French nobility: cleverness, leisure, cultivation and charm. [Read the full article...]
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A Peeping Tom Goes Nuts Over A Blind Girl
Paul Kirk is a librarian and one of his town?s quirkier residents. ?In a childhood home lacking parents (his mother dying of MS and his father an alcoholic) Paul had imagined himself a member of the neighboring family. Now in his late twenties, Paul vicariously participates in the households of his community. His peeping-Tom proclivities express his awkward need for social bonding.
Then Paul meets Bronwyn, a counselor who is lovely, independent and blind. She has inherited her Aunt Phyllis? house and is newly arrived in town. When Paul first sees Bronwyn at church, he knows he wants to be part of her life.?As the mystery of Aunt Phyllis unfolds, Bronwyn and Paul become more deeply involved as they learn about Phyllis? secrets and how they relate to Bronwyn and her past, but Paul?s peeping ways may ruin it all. [Read more...]
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