The philosopher's demise
learning French
by Watson, Richard A.
Richard Watson, a well-known American scholar of Descartes, can read French. He can translate French. But he has never learned to speak it. When he is invited to deliver a paper in Paris - in French - he begins a hilarious and often harrowing voyage on the rough seas of learning to speak a foreign language in late middle age.
In the course of the book, Watson digresses on the contrasts between France and America, on Americans in Paris, and on the mysteries of French engineering. He introduces eccentric French cave explorers and still more eccentric French scholars. But above all, we meet Watson himself - a cave explorer and a teacher with a mid-western reluctance to make his mouth perform the contortions required by French - as he confronts his own national prejudices and his obsession with learning to speak French.
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Subjects
Alliance française, American Novelists, Americans, Biography, College teachers, English speakers, French language, History, Novelists, American, Social life and customs, Study and teaching, TravelPeople
Richard A. Watson (1931-)Places
France, Paris, Paris (France), United StatesTimes
20th century| Edition | Availability |
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1
The philosopher's demise: learning French
1995, University of Missouri Press
in English
0826210031 9780826210036
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