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When did French literature traditionally begin?
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French literature
An early version of Voltaire's Candide printed in London, 1759.
French literature is traditionally considered to have begun in the 9th century, the period to which the earliest surviving fragmentary texts in the vernacular belong.1
The first document written in a form of French is the Strasbourg Oaths, which dates to 842 CE. This text represents a Romance version of oaths sworn by two of Charlemagne’s grandsons. Following this, other early religious texts, such as a sequence on the life of St. Eulalia (dated 880–882 CE), provide further evidence of the language's early literary development. Prior to the 12th century, however, the vast majority of written works in the region were composed in Latin.23