some of these pamphlet sections are not significant in themselves, they did determine why French revolutionaries ignored Gouges’s proposals. Since this offers an answer to a very common question, readers will greatly appreciate this reconstitution , translation, and recontextualization of Gouges’s text. Cole’s assessment of Gouges’s work is not biased by his interest in it and he points out numerous problematic areas, sometimes with wonderful humor (see p. 185, for instance). In a chapter where twelve black and white illustrations show vividly how French revolutionaries mocked their royals, he ascribes “courage to the point of recklessness” (66) to Gouges when she addresses Queen MarieAntoinette . And when comparing the Rights of Woman articles to their 1789 male counterparts from the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, he acknowledges Gouges’s declaration’s “conceptual deficiencies” and “verbal infelicities” (136). Yet in spite of this, the reader cannot but agree with him when he concludes that Gouges’s work is nevertheless an “astonishing achievement” (231). An appendix containing a facsimile of the entire original pamphlet follows the text; notes, a bibliography, and an index conclude the book. Although the bibliography is already divided into “Gouges’s works” and “Other works,” this reader would have liked to see modern texts listed separately from those that appeared during the French Revolution. This work will be of interest to scholars and students alike in the fields of history, French, and women’s studies. The pamphlet texts, in French or English, lend themselves readily for classroom use. University of North Texas Marijn S. Kaplan LAURENTI, JEAN-NOËL, et ROMAIN VIGNEST, éd. Enseigner les humanités: enjeux, programmes et méthodes de la fin du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours. Paris: Kimé, 2010. ISBN 978-2-84174-538-8. Pp. 225. 22 a. This Association des Professeurs de Lettres colloquium includes five talks on the history of pedagogy in secondary schools, and five on contemporary issues. In the preface, Vignest appeals for a universal patrimony of the intellect. Whether modern foreign languages other than French should be taught is not addressed. Laurenti’s Présentation asks what ‘humanistic culture’ means today, and whether the teaching of ancient languages can be justified as leading to modern ones, or whether students should merely learn everyday French to cope with our increasingly commercialized Western culture. Sylvain Menant’s overview of collèges under the Ancien Régime (21–34) reminds us that after the Révocation de l’Édit de Nantes in 1685, all such institutions were Catholic, nearly all the teachers were priests, and all the students were male (the brilliant women intellectuals of the period attest to effective home schooling). The Enlightenment Encyclopédie, however , was as much an attempt to professionalize agriculture and industry as to oppose the Church. The study of pagan authors—provided that the texts were bowdlerized—was, however, accepted as providing models of refined linguistic expression, effective argument, and admonitions to control the passions and the unbridled imagination. The year after the expulsion of the Jesuits from France, Rousseau’s Émile (1762) tried to secularize education “dans une perspective hédoniste, [comme] le moyen d’épanouir la personnalité juvénile et de découvrir les voies d’un bonheur terrestre” (34). 198 FRENCH REVIEW 86.1 Dominique Julia’s essay (35–64) on secondary education during the Revolution emphasizes the principle of citizenship as identifying the People with the Sovereign, thereby universalizing their sense of devotion to the public interest. Adult education through public lectures was thus essential (a contrast with indoctrination through displays of pomp and circumstance under the monarchy would be instructive here). Plutarch’s biography of Lycurgus, and ancient Sparta in general, provided models, until l’abbé Grégoire, Condorcet, and Volney pointed out that Sparta was a slave state—as was Athens. Secondary school attendance declined 75% during the Revolution; 60% of the remaining students attended for only a year. André Chervel’s essay (65–78) on the decline of Latin in school between 1800 and 1880 explains that competing subjects, notably French composition and, later, English and German, arrived late in the nineteenth century. The topics for composition latine came to...
Read full abstract
Jul 1, 2013
Seli̇n Önen 
Open Access