French as language of intimacy in the modern age

This book places francophonie in a historical perspective, a relatively new concept, and studies it in a large geographical area with a number of as yet undocumented cases. In the 16th and 17th centuries, French was the language of the Huguenots, as well as the vehicle for international commercial and diplomatic relations, the language of the Republic of Letters, and widely used in the dissemination of learning. In the Gallicized Europe of the 18th century and throughout the Continent in the 19th century, French became a fashionable medium of expression. In countries such as The Netherlands, Russia, Romania, Italy, Egypt and Turkey, French was not only the principal language for international contacts, but was also widely used within the upper classes for personal correspondence, diaries, travel journals and memoirs. The use of French outside France has mainly been studied as to its role in public life. This book is innovative in that it concentrates on the use of French in private life and analyzes several types of unpublished personal documents from various countries. In studying this phenomenon the contributors to this volume try to place it in context, analyzing the various ways in which French was used as well as its relation to the mother tongue of the user. NB CHICAGO CATALOGUSTEKST: For centuries, French was the language of international commercial and diplomatic relations, a near-dominant language in literature and poetry, and was widely used in teaching. It even became the fashionable language of choice in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for upper class Dutch, Russians, Italians, Egyptians, and others for personal correspondence, travel journals, and memoirs. This book is the first to take a close look at how French was used in that latter context: outside of France, in personal and private life. It gathers contributions from historians, literary scholars, and linguists and covers a wide range of geographical areas.