الفرنسية الكلاسيكية (القرن السابع عشر)

Classical French / French of the Grand Siècle (Français classique, 17c.) is the French of the canonical Grand Siècle authors: Racine (Andromaque, Phèdre, Britannicus), Corneille (Le Cid, Polyeucte, Cinna), Molière (Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, Le Malade imaginaire), La Fontaine (Fables), Pascal (Pensées, Lettres provinciales), Bossuet, La Bruyère (Caractères), Madame de Sévigné, Madame de La Fayette (La Princesse de Clèves). Codified by the Académie française (founded 1635 under Richelieu) and Vaugelas's Remarques sur la langue françoise (1647), the authoritative arbiter of "le bel usage" — the linguistic norm of cultured Parisian society of the Louis XIV court. Distinct from Old French (fro, 9-14c.) and Modern French (fr) by: preserved /we/ for <oi> (le roi /lœrwe/, became /lœrwa/ ca. 1700, attested in Racine's rhymes); active liaison of word-final consonants in formal registers; distinct vowel-length oppositions (chat /ʃaː/ long vs maman /mamɑ̃/); sharp tu/vous formality enforcement; pre-pejorative-shift semantics for many lexical items (honnête, galant). The pedagogical canon taught in French Lycée classes for reading the Grand Siècle dramatic and prose canon.