Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 18, 2008|Volume 36, Number 26

Jean Boorsch

In Memoriam: Jean Boorsch

Pioneered method for French language training

Jean Boorsch, the Street Professor Emeritus of Romance Languages, who pioneered a total-immersion method to train Americans in French, died at his home on March 23 at the age of 102.

A Yale faculty member for 40 years, Boorsch was among a group of French compatriots — including the late Henri Peyre, Jacques Guicharnaud and Georges May — who brought international acclaim to Yale’s Department of French.

Boorsch was born on Jan. 25, 1906, in the small town of Anzin, France, near the Belgian border. About his childhood, he said he well remembered the arrival of British and German troops in his village in World War I. Relocated behind enemy lines during that war, he witnessed the first Armistice Day in Paris on Nov. 11, 1918, saw the participants in the Versailles Conference, and recalled such events as the arrival of Charles Lindbergh after his historic flight in 1927.

In the 1920s Boorsch was a top pupil in the French elementary and secondary school system, graduating from the prestigious Lycée Condorcet. His specialty at that time was ancient Greek, for which he won first prize in all of France and its colonies as well as a Presidential Award. He received his agrégation from the École Normale Supérieure, a part of the Sorbonne, in 1929.

He left for the United States in the summer of 1929, speaking little English, to accept a teaching position in French language and literature at Middlebury College in Vermont. With the exception of almost two years leave back to France for his military service, he remained at Middlebury until June of 1934. In December of 1933, he married one of his former graduate students, Louise Totten, of North Attleboro, Massachusetts.

Beginning in September 1934, he moved with his family to the New Haven area. He published his seminal work on Descartes in 1937, and achieved a full professorship in the 1940s. During World War II, he taught Navy V-12s and other military units in the French language, using an immersion technique that he published in 1944 as the “Méthode Orale de Français.” In later years, he made long-playing records to accompany the course, which ultimately evolved into the “French in Action” course taught in many secondary schools and universities. After his retirement, the course became the core of a series of 24 half-hour television “classes” directed by Yale colleague Professor Pierre Capretz.

Boorsch’s teaching time was divided between undergraduate classes and the Graduate School. It was also divided among language courses and advanced literature classes, focusing on Rabelais, Racine, Corneille, Montaigne, Molière, Boorsch’s schoolmate Sartre, Cocteau and many others. He was a fellow of Pierson College and a mentor to many students.

He devoted many summers to the French Language School at Middlebury College, beginning in the late 1930s, and continuing almost every year until the 1970s, when he became head of the school. For a number of years in the 1940s through the 1960s, he taught ancient Greek, in French, at the Lycée Français in New York City. In the summers of 1939 and 1940, he was a visiting professor at Mills College in Oakland, California, and he also spent a summer at Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia. He lectured widely, and frequently published articles in Yale French Studies and other periodicals.

He was awarded the title of Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur by the French government in 1967.

Boorsch had a passion for gardening, starting with a “Victory” garden he planted during World War II in the backyard of his home in North Haven. He and his wife enjoyed traveling, twice circling the globe. He spent his later years primarily in reading, and enjoying visits from his children and grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held in Dwight Chapel on the Old Campus on Saturday, May 17, at 3 p.m.

Boorsch was predeceased in 1997 by his wife, Louise, and in 1999 by his son, John Peter. He is survived by his son James, of New Milford, Connecticut; his daughter and son-in-law Suzanne Boorsch and Allan Appel, of New Haven; his daughter Mary Louise Vogler, also of New Milford; his daughter-in-law Dorothea Dietrich, of Princeton, New Jersey and Washington, D.C.; and three grandchildren.

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