Summary
Summary of Classic French Course in English
Key ideas
Key idea 1
Clarity gives French writing its character
Wilkinson begins with the qualities he finds characteristic of French writing: clarity, precision, neatness and wit. Its light touch can turn into mockery, but its writers do not all sound alike. Montaigne can be obscure, while Pascal searches the conscience rather than simply entertaining.
From early songs and chronicles, the language moves toward the order of classicism. This is more than a story of changing styles. Wilkinson argues that literature helps shape a nation's fate, making the relationship between books and public life central to his account.
Key idea 2
Chivalry gives way to giant adventures
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Key idea 3
Montaigne turns attention toward himself
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Key idea 4
Fables and comedy expose human failings
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Key idea 5
Irony and letters reveal inner life
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Key idea 6
Tragedy gives conflict a heroic voice
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Key idea 7
Religious voices question royal power
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Key idea 8
Criticism reaches government and the self
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Key idea 9
Order and revolt both shape literature
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Read the rest freeWho it’s for
Readers who like to sample many writers in one sitting, who enjoy wit, satire and sharp opinion, and who want a map of French letters from the chivalry of Froissart to the confessions of Rousseau.
What this book is
Classic French Course in English is a guided tour of French writing, put together by William Cleaver Wilkinson, an American author who died in 1920. He wrote it for English-speaking readers who wanted to meet the French masters without leaving their chairs. Instead of a dry list of names and dates, the book lets each author speak through chosen passages, with the guide's comments set around them.
The tour opens with a short sketch of French literature as a whole. It then moves from the chronicler Froissart in the fourteenth century to Rousseau and the Encyclopedists in the eighteenth. Along the way you meet a giant who eats pilgrims in a salad, a rich man delighted to learn he has spoken prose all his life, a hypocrite who has fooled a whole household, and preachers who dared to frighten kings. Wilkinson judges as he goes. His verdicts are strong, often moral, and always plainly stated.
You come away with a sense of how French style grew, why clarity and wit matter so much to it, and how books shaped the fortunes of a nation. Wilkinson even claims that France was what it was because its literature was what it was. You also gain a map of whom to read next. Let us begin with the character of French writing itself.
In this summary
- 1French writing prizes clarity, wit and styleFree
- 2Chivalry and giants: Froissart and Rabelais
- 3Montaigne makes himself the subject
- 4Maxim writers distill human nature into sentences
- 5La Fontaine and Molière turn fables and farce into insight
- 6Pascal wields irony while Sévigné writes life
- 7Corneille and Racine perfect French tragedy
- 8Preachers and Fénelon speak to kings
- 9Voltaire and Rousseau prepare a revolution
Key point 1 of 9
French writing prizes clarity, wit and style
Wilkinson opens by claiming that French literature is not the wisest or loftiest in the world, but the most brilliant and interesting. It is strong in eloquence, philosophy, history, fiction, criticism, letters and above all comedy. Its one clear weakness is poetry. He blames partly the national character and partly the language, which lost the dignity of Latin without gaining the ringing sound of Italian.
What gives French writing its charm, he says, is clarity, precision, neatness, a light touch and a taste for wit that often slides into mockery. Voltaire held that whatever is not clear is not French. Wilkinson adds that there are many exceptions. Montaigne is sometimes obscure, Rabelais offends against taste, and Pascal probes the conscience instead of amusing the reader. Rousseau and Chateaubriand often write in gloom.
The story begins in verse. Two tongues lived side by side in old France, named for their word for yes. The southern langue d'oc, soft and musical, carried the love songs of the troubadours in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The northern langue d'oïl became French itself, and its poets, the trouvères, sang of heroes in three great cycles, about Charlemagne, King Arthur and Alexander the Great.
Prose grew up beside the verse. Villehardouin told of the Fourth Crusade, and Joinville wrote about Saint Louis. Froissart became the Herodotus of French history and Comines its Tacitus. In the sixteenth century a group called the Pleiades, led by the poet Ronsard, stuffed the language with Greek and Latin words. The stern Malherbe then cut that growth back. Together they prepared classicism, which reached its height under Louis XIV with help from the Hôtel de Rambouillet and the French Academy.
Wilkinson then lists five lasting traits. French literature has an unbroken history. It lives largely on its own resources. It has been renewed by outside forces, most recently Shakespeare's influence on the Romantics. It has been shaped by deliberate public effort. And it has acted on the fate of the nation. The eighteenth century turned against the Church and pointed toward revolution, and Victor Hugo's Romantics finally broke the spell of classicism.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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What should education develop, according to Montaigne?
Right. “The pupil should test and sift what he reads, taking nothing on bare authority, and should turn knowledge into judgment the way bees turn flowers into honey.”Not quite. “The pupil should test and sift what he reads, taking nothing on bare authority, and should turn knowledge into judgment the way bees turn flowers into honey.”
What view of kingship does Fénelon's Telemachus teach?
Right. “It says a king exists to serve his people, that laws bind him, and that absolute power ruins a state.”Not quite. “It says a king exists to serve his people, that laws bind him, and that absolute power ruins a state.”
How does Wilkinson describe the relationship between a nation's literature and its fortunes?
Right. “Along the way he argues that a nation's books and its fortunes act on each other.”Not quite. “Along the way he argues that a nation's books and its fortunes act on each other.”
Questions about Classic French Course in English
What is Classic French Course in English about?
It is a guided tour of French literature by William Cleaver Wilkinson. It runs from Froissart in the fourteenth century to Rousseau and the Encyclopedists in the eighteenth, with translated passages and the author's comments on each writer.
Which French authors does the book cover?
It covers Froissart, Rabelais, Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Vauvenargues, La Fontaine, Molière, Pascal, Madame de Sévigné, Corneille, Racine, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon, Fénelon, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau and the Encyclopedists.
What are the Provincial Letters that Pascal wrote?
They are witty letters in which a Parisian gentleman pretends to be a simple seeker and draws a Jesuit into explaining his order's moral reasoning. Pascal wrote them to defend his friend Arnauld and to expose what he saw as lax teaching.
Is this book easy to follow for someone new to French literature?
Yes, in the sense that each chapter takes one author, gives dates and background, and then offers a sample passage. Wilkinson writes in a lively, direct voice, so you can read one chapter at a time and still follow.
What is the main message of the book?
Wilkinson shows that French writing is marked by clarity, wit and style, and that it has deeply shaped the nation's character and history. He also judges each author by moral standards, so the book offers strong, personal opinions.
