« ... faire sentir par la lecture des Auteurs le génie & le caractère de la langue Françoise » L'enseignement de la langue française au xviii^e siècle entre littérature et philosophie

At the beginnings of the age of Enlightenment, the teaching of French language and the interest in questions of didactics are playing an important role in increasing a public able to to read and to write. In this article, we will expose the main points of the discussion about French as a national language, the methods proposed in the most important manuals and last but not least the argumentation in favor of a model based on the “best authors”.