Classical Age: The Academy and the Codification of French

The Grand Siècle Begins

The 17th century, France's Grand Siècle, witnessed the transformation of a dynamic but chaotic language into an instrument of unprecedented precision and elegance. This was the age when French claimed its position as Europe's preeminent language of diplomacy, philosophy, and polite society. Yet this triumph of standardization came at a price: the suppression of linguistic diversity and the creation of rigid hierarchies that would spark future rebellions.

The century began in violence. The assassination of Henri IV in 1610 left France with a child king, Louis XIII, and a foreign queen regent, Marie de Medici. Political instability might have fragmented linguistic unity, but instead it created conditions for unprecedented centralization. Cardinal Richelieu, the great minister who effectively ruled France from 1624 to 1642, understood that political absolutism required linguistic uniformity. His creation of the Académie française in 1635 would forever change the relationship between language and power in France.

The Foundation of the Académie française

The Académie française began informally, as a group of learned men meeting in the home of Valentin Conrart to discuss literature and language. When Richelieu learned of these gatherings, he saw an opportunity. By offering royal protection and official status, he transformed a private literary circle into an instrument of state policy. The Académie's mission, as defined in its founding statutes, was "to give definite rules to our language and to render it pure, eloquent, and capable of treating the arts and sciences."

This mandate encoded several revolutionary assumptions. First, that language could and should have "definite rules" rather than evolving naturally through usage. Second, that French needed to be "purified"—implying that its current state was somehow contaminated. Third, that a small group of men (women were excluded until Marguerite Yourcenar's election in 1980) could determine proper usage for an entire nation.

The forty "immortals" of the Académie included poets, dramatists, theologians, and nobles, but their diversity was more apparent than real. All were men, all were Catholic (after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes), and all moved in Parisian elite circles. Their linguistic judgments inevitably reflected their social position, codifying the usage of the court and salon while dismissing provincial, popular, and professional varieties as incorrect.

The Dictionary as Weapon

The Académie's most ambitious project was its dictionary, which took nearly sixty years to complete. When finally published in 1694, the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française was unlike any previous lexicographical work. Rather than describing how French was actually used, it prescribed how it should be used. Words were included or excluded based on their perceived elegance and propriety, not their currency in actual speech.

The dictionary's principles revealed the Académie's ideology. Technical terms were largely excluded as too specialized for general discourse. Regional words were omitted as provincial barbarisms. Popular expressions were rejected as vulgar. What remained was a purified French suitable for the elevated conversation of honnêtes gens—the cultivated elite who set social standards.

Women's relationship to this linguistic authority was paradoxical. Excluded from the Académie, they nonetheless exercised enormous influence through the salons where refined usage was developed and policed. Madame de Rambouillet's "Blue Room," Mademoiselle de Scudéry's "Saturdays," and Madame de Lafayette's gatherings shaped the language that the Académie would later codify. These salonnières demonstrated that linguistic authority could be exercised through social practice as effectively as through institutional decree.

Vaugelas and the Doctrine of Usage

Claude Favre de Vaugelas, in his "Remarques sur la langue française" (1647), articulated the principle that would govern Classical French: "le bon usage." Good usage, he declared, was "the manner of speaking of the soundest part of the court, in conformity with the manner of writing of the soundest authors of the time." This circular definition—the best people speak correctly because correct speech is what the best people use—enshrined social hierarchy as linguistic law.

Vaugelas's observations, though presenting themselves as mere descriptions, were profoundly prescriptive. He condemned double negatives (common in popular speech), criticized the use of "car" (for) to begin sentences, and insisted on minute distinctions between near-synonyms. His work created a minefield of potential errors that only the most carefully educated could navigate successfully.

Yet Vaugelas also showed sensitivity to linguistic change and regional variation. He acknowledged that usage evolved and that what was correct in one generation might become archaic in the next. He even admitted that women often had better linguistic intuition than men, particularly regarding the euphony and elegance of expressions. This flexibility would be largely forgotten by his more rigid successors.

The Salon and Linguistic Refinement

The salons of 17th-century Paris were laboratories of linguistic experimentation. In the Hôtel de Rambouillet, aristocratic and bourgeois intellectuals mingled, creating new forms of sociability that demanded new forms of expression. The art of conversation, raised to unprecedented heights, required a French capable of infinite nuance and suggestion.

The précieuses, later mocked by Molière, pushed linguistic refinement to extremes that revealed both its possibilities and limitations. Their circumlocutions—calling mirrors "the counselors of grace" or chairs "the commodities of conversation"—sought to elevate everyday reality through linguistic transformation. While often ridiculed, their experiments expanded French vocabulary and demonstrated the language's capacity for metaphorical innovation.

Madeleine de Scudéry, the most successful woman writer of the century, defended préciosité as a feminine contribution to culture. Her novels, running to thousands of pages, created a prose style of psychological subtlety that influenced the development of the modern novel. Her "Map of Tender"—a allegorical geography of love—showed how abstract emotions could be given concrete expression through carefully chosen language.

Theater and the Classical Ideal

The theater became the supreme test of Classical French. The three unities—of time, place, and action—demanded a language of maximum efficiency and elegance. Every word had to advance plot, reveal character, and maintain appropriate style. The alexandrine verse form, with its twelve syllables and rigid caesura, imposed formal constraints that paradoxically enabled expressive freedom.

Pierre Corneille, the first great dramatist of the Classical age, demonstrated French's capacity for heroic expression. His "Le Cid" (1637) provoked the first major literary controversy of the century. The Académie française, asked to judge whether the play violated Classical rules, produced a critique that established its authority over literary matters. The quarrel of "Le Cid" showed that linguistic and aesthetic judgments were inseparable from political power.

Corneille's language, with its emphasis on glory, duty, and will, created a heroic register that would define French tragedy. His characters speak in perfectly balanced antitheses, their dilemmas expressed through the formal perfection of their verse:

"Je dois à ma maîtresse aussi bien qu'à mon père: J'attire en me vengeant sa haine et sa colère; J'attire ses mépris en ne me vengeant pas."

(I owe to my mistress as well as to my father: I attract by avenging myself her hatred and her anger; I attract her scorn by not avenging myself.)

This language of moral paradox, where every choice leads to dishonor, expressed the tragic vision of the Classical age.

Racine and the Perfection of Classical French

Jean Racine represented the culmination of Classical French style. His tragedies, written in alexandrines of crystalline purity, achieved effects of overwhelming power through the most restricted means. Where Corneille was rhetorical, Racine was musical; where Corneille analyzed, Racine suggested.

Racine's French appeared simple, even conversational, yet every word was calculated for maximum effect. His famous line from "Phèdre"—"C'est Vénus tout entière à sa proie attachée" (It is Venus entire fastened on her prey)—demonstrates his genius. The sentence's structure, with the goddess's name preceding the image of total possession, creates a sense of inexorable fate through purely linguistic means.

Women in Racine speak with particular eloquence, their passion finding expression through the very constraints of Classical verse. Phèdre's confession of forbidden love, Hermione's jealous rage, Bérénice's renunciation—these great speeches gave voice to female experience within the formal limitations of court culture. Racine showed that Classical French, far from being emotionally restrictive, could express the most violent passions through its very restraint.

Molière and the Comedy of Language

While tragedy elevated French to heroic heights, comedy revealed its capacity for social observation and satire. Molière, actor-playwright-courtier, created a theatrical language that could move seamlessly from prose to verse, from farce to high comedy, always maintaining perfect adequacy to character and situation.

Molière's great innovation was making linguistic behavior itself a source of comedy. In "Les Précieuses ridicules," he mocked the affected language of would-be sophisticates. In "Le Bourgeois gentilhomme," Monsieur Jourdain's attempts to speak like a nobleman reveal the social anxieties encoded in linguistic choice. In "Les Femmes savantes," learned ladies spout pedantic jargon that reveals their divorce from reality.

Yet Molière's satire was double-edged. While mocking linguistic pretension, he demonstrated French's remarkable range, from the philosophical prose of Don Juan to the peasant dialect of Sganarelle. His collaboration with the composer Lully in creating comédie-ballet showed how French could adapt to new mixed genres. Most importantly, Molière proved that Classical French could laugh at itself.

The Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns

The late 17th century witnessed a debate that would define French cultural identity: the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns. Charles Perrault's claim that modern French literature equaled or surpassed classical antiquity challenged fundamental assumptions about language and progress. Could French, a mere vernacular descended from "corrupt" Latin, rival the perfection of Homer and Virgil?

The Moderns argued that language, like science, progressed over time. French had developed analytical clarity unknown to ancient languages. Its fixed word order eliminated the ambiguities of Latin's flexible syntax. Its rich vocabulary could express modern concepts inconceivable to the ancients. Most provocatively, they suggested that French had become a universal language, capable of expressing truths valid for all humanity.

The Ancients, led by Boileau, countered that linguistic change meant decay, not progress. Modern French had lost the poetic power of older forms. The very clarity the Moderns praised represented an impoverishment, a reduction of language to mere communication. They feared that without classical models, French would degenerate into barbarism.

Women Writers and Alternative Voices

Despite institutional exclusion, women writers flourished in the Classical age, often developing alternative approaches to linguistic authority. Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy and Marie-Jeanne L'Héritier created the literary fairy tale, a genre that allowed them to explore female experience through the freedom of fantasy. Their French, while polished, admitted popular elements excluded from more prestigious genres.

Madame de Lafayette's "La Princesse de Clèves" (1678) created a new form: the psychological novel. Her prose, stripped of Classical ornament, achieved a transparency that seemed to give direct access to consciousness:

"Elle passa tout le jour des fiançailles chez elle à se parer, pour se trouver le soir au bal et au festin royal qui se faisait au Louvre."

(She spent the entire day of the betrothal at home adorning herself, in order to be at the evening's ball and royal feast at the Louvre.)

This simple sentence, with its focus on external action concealing internal turmoil, established a novelistic tradition that would culminate in Proust.

Madame de Sévigné's letters, not intended for publication, revealed a more informal Classical French. Her correspondence with her daughter showed the language's capacity for intimacy, humor, and spontaneity within the constraints of proper usage. Her vivid accounts of court life, provincial society, and family affairs created a private counter-history to official narratives.

Religious Expression and Linguistic Authority

The religious conflicts of the 17th century profoundly influenced French language and literature. The Catholic Reformation, with its emphasis on emotional devotion and sensory experience, developed a baroque prose style that contrasted sharply with Classical restraint. Bossuet's funeral orations deployed all the resources of rhetoric to overwhelm audiences with the grandeur of death and the glory of resurrection.

The Jansenists, centered at Port-Royal, developed an alternative aesthetic of austere clarity. Their translation of the Bible into French, though condemned by religious authorities, showed that sacred texts could be rendered in dignified vernacular prose. Pascal's "Pensées," with their fragmented, aphoristic style, created a new form of religious expression that influenced all subsequent French philosophy.

The persecution of Protestants after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) drove many French speakers into exile, creating alternative centers of French culture in Holland, Prussia, and England. These Huguenot refugees, often highly educated, developed their own French literature that challenged the monopoly of Catholic France. Pierre Bayle's "Dictionnaire historique et critique," published in Rotterdam, used skeptical French prose to undermine certainties both religious and linguistic.

Science and Technical Language

The foundation of the Académie des Sciences (1666) raised questions about the relationship between French and scientific discourse. Could French, refined for literary expression, adapt to the needs of mathematical and experimental science? The challenge was particularly acute given that Latin remained the international language of scholarship.

French scientists and philosophers responded by creating new forms of technical prose. Descartes, writing his "Discours de la méthode" (1637) in French rather than Latin, established principles of clarity and logical progression that would characterize French philosophical prose. His famous "Je pense, donc je suis" (I think, therefore I am) showed how French could express philosophical concepts with lapidary concision.

Women were largely excluded from formal scientific institutions but contributed through translation and popularization. Émilie du Châtelet's translation of Newton's Principia, with her extensive commentary, helped establish French scientific vocabulary. Her own philosophical works demonstrated that technical French need not be exclusively masculine.

The Court of Versailles and Linguistic Hegemony

The removal of the court to Versailles in 1682 created a linguistic hothouse where proper French became a survival skill. The elaborate etiquette of Versailles required mastery of subtle linguistic distinctions. Forms of address, levels of politeness, and conversational gambits were codified with Byzantine complexity. Speaking incorrectly could mean social death.

This linguistic pressure created remarkable uniformity among the nobility. Regional accents disappeared; dialect words were suppressed; even intonation patterns converged on a Parisian model. The famous "r" pronunciation that distinguishes French from other Romance languages became a marker of cultivation. Courtiers who retained provincial pronunciations faced ridicule and exclusion.

Yet Versailles also preserved archaic forms as markers of distinction. The King's French included expressions obsolete in ordinary usage. This linguistic conservatism, combined with innovative euphemism and circumlocution, created a court dialect increasingly divorced from the language of the larger population.

Colonial Expansion and French Varieties

The 17th century saw French expansion beyond Europe, creating new contexts for linguistic development. In New France (Canada), French settlers, isolated from metropolitan innovations, preserved forms that would disappear in France itself. The harsh conditions and contact with indigenous languages created a distinctive vocabulary for flora, fauna, and survival techniques.

In the Caribbean, French encountered African languages through the horrors of slavery. The creoles that emerged—Haitian, Martinican, Guadeloupean—were not "broken French" but new languages born from cultural collision. Though despised by colonial authorities, these creoles demonstrated the creative potential inherent in linguistic contact.

The establishment of French trading posts in India and the Indian Ocean created other contact varieties. French merchants and administrators, often taking local wives, raised multilingual children who moved fluidly between languages. These métis populations, culturally and linguistically hybrid, challenged the ideal of pure French even as they extended its reach.

The End of the Century: Achievements and Tensions

By 1700, French had achieved unprecedented prestige. The Treaty of Nijmegen (1678) was negotiated in French rather than Latin, marking its acceptance as a diplomatic language. French had replaced Italian as the language of European courts. Frederick II of Prussia would later declare French "the language of cultivated people," spoken from Madrid to St. Petersburg.

Yet this triumph concealed growing tensions. The gap between written and spoken French had widened dangerously. The exclusion of technical, regional, and popular vocabulary impoverished the language even as it was refined. The association of correct French with social hierarchy made linguistic propriety a barrier to social mobility. Most ominously, the identification of French with absolutist monarchy would make linguistic reform inseparable from political revolution.

Conclusion: The Classical Paradox

The Classical age created a French of unprecedented beauty and precision. The literature of the Grand Siècle—Corneille's heroic dilemmas, Racine's psychological penetration, Molière's social comedy, Lafayette's narrative subtlety—remains unsurpassed. The linguistic principles established by the Académie française created a standard that enabled communication across regions and centuries.

Yet this achievement came at significant cost. The suppression of linguistic diversity, the exclusion of popular voices, and the rigid codification of usage created a French increasingly separated from lived experience. The very perfection of Classical French contained the seeds of its own destruction. A language too refined for ordinary use, too pure for modern life, would inevitably face challenges from those it excluded.

As we turn to the Enlightenment, we will see how these tensions exploded into open conflict. The philosophes would use the clarity of Classical French to challenge the authority that created it. Writers would stretch standardized forms to accommodate new ideas about nature, society, and human potential. Most dramatically, the Revolution would attempt to democratize a language shaped by centuries of hierarchy. The perfect instrument created by the Classical age would be turned against its creators.

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