Against Literature: The “Question of Latin”

Abstract

In 1885, three years after the official founding of the national school system, and five years after Ferry’s reforms of the secondary school curriculum began to undermine the centrality of Latin, a controversy erupted which illustrated the issues at hand. Raoul Frary, a former normalien and lycée professor turned journalist, published La Question du latin, a book in which he argued that the teaching of Latin, and of Classics in general, should be reserved only for students in the school system who were to become specialists in the field of classical studies, rather than imposed upon each and every postulant to the baccalauréat. Frary’s book gave rise to a polemic that lasted years, and which produced, aside from numerous articles and letters in the press, several books and pamphlets, mainly hostile, written by members of the clergy and university establishment.¹