DÉJEUNER, n., v. This French word, déjeuner, is made up of the same morphemes (units of meaning) as its English counterpart, breakfast. In French, the verb jeuner means “to fast” and dé- is a negative prefix, much like de- in English (defrost, debunk, decipher, etc.). So déjeuner is to de-fast, to stop fasting, to break your fast.
It’s funny—as an English speaker, I almost never stop to think about “breakfast” as its two component parts: break, fast. Neither does anyone else, and you can hear it in the way US English speakers pronounce the word [ˈbɹɛkfəst], which sounds very distinct from “break” [bɹeɪk] and “fast” [fæst]. The whole eclipses the parts.
If you speak French, you might be saying “but wait, déjeuner isn’t breakfast, it’s lunch.”
Lunch, according to Eugène Briffault’s 1847 survey of French food culture Paris à table, is an English invention. He includes the word luncheon in his text in italics because “le mot se naturalise difficilement en français” (the word is difficult to translate into French). Since 1789, the French, he claims, eat only two meals per day, déjeuner and dîner. Of the two, only dîner truly matters. Déjeuner is whatever you eat between waking and two o’clock in the afternoon.
In case you were wondering about that “since 1789,” Briffault says that in the days of the Ancien Régime, the French used to eat four meals per day, the other two being goûter (now usually translated “snack”) and souper (“supper”). Briffault asserts that “there is no more goûter” with no explanation, and my understanding is that souper only really counts if you eat it at a ball at midnight after dancing with a vicomte.
Briffault is not clear on whether luncheon is a good invention—he ranks the English below the French on the scale of civilization, as one might expect—only that one begins to see it in France. It started with Queen Victoria’s coronation, you see.
Toward the middle of the day, according to the accounts in French recorders, a movement rolled through this radiant crowd and all the blonde ladies were seen to draw, from the pockets of their dresses in silk, gold, silver, and velvet brocade, rosewood cases shaped like glove boxes: these small items held thinly sliced sandwiches, each containing a slice of ham between two slices of bread, which they bit into with the large white teeth that one sees on the other side of the channel. (Translation is my own. I have preserved Briffault’s italics.)
Can’t figure out if that teeth thing is a compliment or an insult. Still, I love this image of all the titled Englishwomen carrying ham sandwiches in special fancy rosewood boxes, and I also love that Briffault prints the word “sandwiches” in his French text (no italics) but then explains carefully that there are two slices of bread involved. The women also drank sherry, by the way. Briffault does not report what the men ate, and I think we can all agree that if they weren’t carrying their own rosewood boxes in the pockets of their brocade frockcoats, we don’t care.
He does report that all the French journalists envied the ladies their ham sandwiches, though. So I guess that’s the beginning of déjeuner meaning lunch instead of breakfast, which came to be called petit déjeuner and now, if you’re in a real hurry, petit déj.
Today I have eaten neither breakfast nor lunch but brunch, a meal Briffault would find even more foreign. It was delicious.
This week in Capital-R Romance, in addition to finishing Paris à table, I also read one whole chapter of a book in Spanish. I had to keep a dictionary by my side the entire time, but as you all may know from reading this newsletter, that’s how I live my life anyway. Reading feels pretty different when you’re not at ease with a language, but you don’t get to be at ease without putting in some work first. Here’s hoping chapter two of Yuri Herrera’s Señales que precederán al fin del mundo will be a little easier than chapter one, and so on. Some day I’ll actually write about the content of this book, I promise!
This week in small-r romance, I read…
The Governess Affair (m/f, both cis and het, historical, novella) by Courtney Milan. I love the rest of Milan’s Brothers Sinister series, so I’m not sure why I hadn’t read this one, but I picked it up recently after encountering this insightful close reading and this discussion of its feminism, and God, what a masterpiece of a novella. Milan fearlessly confronts issues that so many other romance novels fumble or gloss over: the titular governess, Serena, has been raped and is now pregnant by her former employer, the Duke of Clermont. She stages a silent protest, sitting outside his home every day until he acknowledges her. The Duke—who is never treated as anything but a villain, which is unusual in a subgenre where “duke” is almost synonymous with “hero”—sends his man of business, Hugo, to deal with Serena without explaining what he has done. Over the course of his interactions with Serena, Hugo discovers his employer’s crime, and then the two of them work together in service of justice. The whole thing is deftly handled and very satisfying, and because it’s Courtney Milan, it’s also funny—miraculously so, given its subject matter. Hugo and Serena’s banter is delightful, and there is such respect and tenderness between them. Gorgeous. The Governess Affair is also free to download right now. Content warnings: rape (in the past, discussed but not described), pregnancy, a main character grew up in an abusive family situation, sex.
Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks (gay m/bi m, both cis, young adult, sci-fi) by Nathan Burgoine. This is so sweet and funny and full of heart, and the teenagers feel like real teenagers to me (granted I am not a reliable source here, since I no longer regularly interact with Youths), and I love how well it balances the sci-fi aspects, the romance, and Cole’s time with his parents and at school. Also, as an aside, Cole’s dad is an ASL interpreter and Cole dreams of being one some day too, so there is discussion of the work of interpreting, and it felt spot-on to me. I’m not a pro, and I don’t interpret ASL, but the parts about how sometimes, as the interpreter, you have to say awful things because it’s your job to repeat whatever was said? Whew. Close to home. A lot of things about this book feel close to home—Cole deals with his anxiety by making lists and bullet journaling. The recurring to-do lists in the book were such a nice character touch. A really enjoyable read. Content warnings: mentions of homophobia, a few minor instances of bullying, discussion of kidnapping.
And in things I read this week that are neither Romance nor romance, Daniel Lavery riffing on Marie de France’s “Bisclavret” and acceptable werewolf behavior is great whether or not you’ve read the original.
Also potentially relevant to the interests of readers of this newsletter is this blog post about translation errors from English to Irish, “Even Racists Got the Blues.”
This week, thanks to discussion of what looks like a horrendously racist novel with a seven-figure advance, Book Twitter has been having a conversation about italicizing foreign words in fiction. Daniel José Older made this witty video on the subject a few years ago, and KJ Charles recently discussed it with Mina V. Esguerra in a blog post. I absolutely agree that there’s no need to italicize foreign words in the dialogue of code-switching characters.
I’m gonna continue to italicize words when I analyze them in this newsletter because I think it offers better visual clarity than using quotation marks for every word I discuss. The word portion of this newsletter is about highlighting these words and lingering over them, which is the opposite of what should happen when they’re used in code-switching dialogue in fiction, so I think these two positions are consistent with each other. And I got a real kick out of Eugène Briffault insisting that luncheon couldn’t possible be translated into French.
Have a good week!
