Page:The American language; an inquiry into the development of English in the United States (IA americanlanguage00menc 0).pdf/426

412 (= coal-oil), une bonne à tout faire is une servante générale, and un article d'occasion is un article de seconde main!

The French dialect spoken by the Creoles and their colored retainers in Louisiana has been extensively studied, as has the dialect of the French West Indies. Its principal characters must be familiar to every reader of the stories of Lafcadio Hearn, George W. Cable, Kate Chopin and Grace Elizabeth King. It produced a large oral literature, chiefly in the form of songs, during the days of actual French rule in Louisiana, and some of this literature is still preserved, though the French-speaking population of the state is rapidly diminishing, and New Orleans is now a thoroughly American city. But the written literature of the Creoles was almost wholly in standard French. Curiously enough, nearly all of it was produced, not during the days of French rule, but after the American occupation in 1803. "It was not until after the War of 1812," says a recent historian of it, "that letters really flourished in French Louisiana. The contentment and prosperity that filled the forty years between 1820 and 1860 encouraged the growth of a vigorous and in some respects a native literature, comprising plays, novels, and poems." The chief dramatists of the period were Placide Canonge, A. Lussan, Oscar Dugué, Le Blanc de Villeneufve, P. Pérennes and Charles Testut; today all their works are dead, and they themselves are but names. Testut was also a poet and novelist; other novelists were Canonge, Alfred Mercier, Alexandre Barde, Adrien Rouquette, Jacques de Roquigny and Charles Lemaître. The principal poets were Dominique Rouquette, Tullius Saint-Céran, Constant Lepouzé, Felix de Courmont, Alexandre Latil, A. Lussan, and Armand Lanusse. But the most competent of all the Creole authors was Charles E. A. Gayerré (1805-95), who was at once historian, dramatist and novelist. Today the Creole literature is