From Barbarism to Universality: Language and Identity in Early Modern France by Christopher Coski
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ISBN: 9781611170368
University of South Carolina Press, October 2011
200 pages, Hardcover
As European vernaculars emerged from the shadow of Latin in the early modern era, the French language acquired greater prestige than any other on the continent while French culture simultaneously came to exert a disproportionately large influence across national borders. Christopher Coski closely examines landmark French texts from the period to explore the literary and philosophical forces at play in a transformation of French self-perception, as French intellectuals from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries moved away from viewing their language and culture as barbaric and came to advocate them as universal models of cultivation and civilization.