Includes bibliographical references (pages 295-303)
CONTENTS NOTE
Text of Note
Part I: The language of the earliest texts (AD 842 to the end of the 11th century) -- The Strasbourg Oaths (842): the earliest vernacular text -- The Sequence of Saint Eulalia (c. 880-82) -- Extract from the bilingual Sermon on Jonah (c. 937-52) -- La Vie de Saint Alexis (mid-11th century) -- Part II: The 'heyday' of Old French (French in the 12th and 13th centuries) -- La Chanson de Roland (early 12th century) -- Le Chevalier de la charrette (c. 1177-81) -- Le Jeu de saint Nicolas (c. 1200) -- The Old French Bible (first half of the 13th century) -- Geoffroy de Villehardouin, The Conquest of Constantinople (early 13th century) -- The Lettre d'Hippocrate (mid-13th century) -- Donation testamentaire (1239) -- Lettre de Jean Sarrasin a Nicolas Arrode (23 June 1249) -- Part III: Middle French (French in the 14th and 15th centuries) -- Cent nouvelles nouvelles (mid-15th century) -- Alain Chartier, Le Quadrilogue invectif (1422) -- Le Testament Villon (mid-15th century) -- La farse de Maître Pathelin (mid-15th century) -- Le Menagier de Paris (end of the 14th century) -- Land sale, 23 May 1380 -- Nicolas Chuquet, Le Triparty en la science des nombres (late 15th century) -- La Manière de langage (end of the 14th century) -- Part IV: Renaissance French (French in the 16th century) -- François Rabelais, Gargantua (1534) -- Michel de Montaigne, Essais (1588) -- Jean Calvin, Institution de la religion chrestienne (1541) -- Robert Olivétan's translation of the Bible (1535) -- Ambroise Paré, La Methode de traicter les playes faictes par hacquebutes et aultres bastons à feu (1545) -- André Thevet, Les Singularitez de la France Antarctique (1557/8) -- Louis Meigret, Le Treţté de la grammeŗe françoȩze (1550) -- Part V: Classical and neo-classical French (French in the 17th and 18th centuries up to the revolution) -- Claude Favre de Vaugelas, Remarques sue la langue françoise (1647) -- François de Sales, Introduction à la vie dévote (early 17th century) -- Voltaire, Candide (1759) -- Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) -- Jean Racine, Britannicus (1669) -- Mercure de France (1732) -- Victor Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau and Franco̧is Quesnay, Philosophie rurale ou économic générale et politique de l'agriculture (1763/4) -- Jean Héroard's record of the Dauphin's speech (early 17th century) -- French in the world: an early example of Haitian Creole (mid-18th century) -- Part VI: Modern French (from the Revolution to the present day) -- Michel Tournier, Gaspard, Melchior & Balthazar (1980) -- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1856/7) -- Robert Desnos, Langage cuit (1923) -- Le Monde (13.4.1961): Gagarin in space -- Annales de l'Institut Pasteur. Microbiologie (1986) -- Decree of the National Assembly, 20 July 1790 -- Jacques Cellard, Chroniques de langage (1972) -- Regional French: spoken midi French -- Antonine Maillet, La Sagouine (1971)