INTRODUCTION TO FRENCH MASTERPIECES,

Douglas W. Alden, '33 editor.Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1948, pp.399. $3.25

Increasingly in this shrinking world, American educators must feel that provincialism and narrow nationalism have no place in our post-war society. It seems more important now than ever before that we gain a real knowledge of the historical and intellectual background of our own culture by looking out beyond the Atlantic to discover our position in the long and gradual development of western civilization. Acquaintance with a country more foreign to our own than is England will widen our perspective still more, and specifically, the role of France as both heir to the classic culture of the Mediterranean world and pioneer in modern political and social thinking, is important.

Pressure and competition from the utilitarian branches of the curriculum, as Mr. Alden (now teaching at Princeton University) points out in the preface to his Introduction to French Masterpieces, results in language courses more heavily populated in the first two years of college than in the last two. With this in mind, he has prepared a text that from the outset introduces the student of French to certain cultural as opposed to purely linguistic values and, by arousing the interest early, encourages continued study of the writings of that language beyond the introductory stage.

Mr. Alden presents the gems of 800 years of French literature, selecting judiciously from 24 different authors from the medieval troubadours to Proust. The works have been foreshortened so that the range of the volume might be as extensive as possible. Brief and clear synopses are interpolated with good effect to replace the omitted portions of a work, and the result is "a series of connected extracts" in the original language of the authors themselves. The editor's brief introduction (in French) to each author serves to clarify the intellectual trend of the period and the writer's contribution to that trend. A full French-English vocabulary and footnotes are included for the novice.