Overview

From the death of Louis XIV to the Revolution-in Sweden, Austria, Italy, Spain, England, Russia, and Germany; among kings and queens, diplomats, military leaders, writers, great ladies, and artists-French was the universal language. This book presents a series of portraits of foreigners who conversed and corresponded in French regardless of their native language, accompanied by excerpts from their letters or other writings, to demonstrate the genius of the language in the period when it was the political and intellectual lingua franca of Europe. Profiled here are figures familiar to English-speaking readers, such as Catherine the Great, Francisco Goya, Horace Walpole, and Benjamin Franklin. Here too are many who are less well known today: Stanis_as II Augustus Poniatowski, the last king of Poland; Gustave III of Sweden; and Gouverneur Morris, the U.S. ambassador to France during the Terror. All of them were irresistibly attracted to France; to the ideal of human happiness inspired by the Enlightenment, whose capital was Paris; and to the taste, style of living, and modes of social pleasure that spread from France across the Continent. Marc Fumaroli provides glimpses not only into their public and private lives but also into a conception of the ""sweetness of life"" that France and its language nourished for nearly a century.

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9781590173756

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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 Abbe 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 <br> The names read like a Who's Who: the Viscount Bolingbroke and Lord Chesterfield of Englan

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. <br> --Freeman G. Henry, Language, Culture, and Hegemony in Modern France

Author Information

Marc Fumaroli is a scholar on French rhetoric and art. He is a member of the British Academy; the American Academy of Science, Letters and Arts; the Societe d'histoire litteraire de la France; and the Academie francaise. Fumaroli received the Monseigneur Marcel and the Critique prizes in 1982 and 1992, respectively, and is president of the Societe des Amis du Louvre. RICHARD HOWARD is the author of seventeen volumes of poetry and has published more than one hundred fifty translations from the French, including, for NYRB, Marc Fumaroli's When the World Spoke French, Balzac's Unknown Masterpiece, and Maupassant's Alien Hearts. He has received a National Book Award for his translation of Les Fleurs du Mal and a Pulitzer Prize for Untitled Subjects, a collection of poetry. His most recent book of poems, inspired by his own schooling in Ohio, is A Progressive Education (2014).

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