When the World Spoke French

“Conceived as ‘a portrait gallery of foreigners conquered by Enlightenment France,’ Fumaroli’s book provides biographical essays about diverse and fascinating cast of characters. He depicts them all as wonderfully distinct individuals—real people whose eclectic interests, messy love lives and oddball personalities square ill with the lofty philosophical abstractions ‘the Enlightenment’ so often calls to mind. Fumaroli’s Enlightenment is, first and foremost, a wild and woolly human drama, its players every bit as multifaceted (and flawed) as those making headlines today.” — Caroline Weber, The New York Times
During the eighteenth century, French culture set the standard for all of Europe. Among kings and queens, diplomats, military leaders, writers, aristocrats, and artists, French was the universal language of politics and intellectual life. In When the World Spoke French, Marc Fumaroli presents a gallery of portraits of Europeans and Americans who conversed and corresponded in French, along with excerpts from their letters or other writings. Their stories are testaments to the appeal of that famous “sweetness of life” nourished by France and its language.