No More Learning

See for instance Guiraudet, Qu'est-ce que la nation, 63; prospectus to La Feuille villageoise, excerpted in Michel de Certeau, Dominique Julia, and Jacques Revel, Une politique de la langue: La Re? volution franc? aise et les patois (Paris, 1975), 283; "Sur l'influence des mots," 1814.
Henri de Boulainvilliers, Histoire de l'ancien gouvernement de France, avec XIV lettres historiques sur les parlements ou e? tats ge? ne? raux (The Hague and Amsterdam, 1727), 69.
Laurent-Pierre Be? renger, Porte-feuille d'un troubadour, quoted in Gossman, Medievalism (see Ch. 1, n. 116), 342. Gossman's work is fundamental on this subject.
Sacy, L'honneur franc? ois.
See [Bachaumont, et al. ], Me? moires secrets (see Ch. 2, n. 64), VII, 182. On the fad for Renaissance clothing, see Clarence D. Brenner, "Henri IV on the French Stage" (see Ch. 1, n. 40), esp. 544; and in general on Henri IV in the eighteenth century, Reinhard, La le? gende de Henri IV (see Ch. 1, n. 38). Quoted in de Baecque, The Body Politic, 140.
Quoted in ibid. , 142.
Quoted in ibid. ; Le Moniteur, August 17, 1793.
Petition pour rendre a` la France son ve? ritable nom (n. p. , n. d. ). The pamphet is signed "par Dupin et Lagrange, re? publicains gaulois. " See Bibliothe`que de la Socie? te? de Port-Royal, Fonds Re? volution 120, no. 45.
On the uses of Hercules as a symbol of masculinity and strength, see Lynn
Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, 1984), 94-116. On earlier French uses of Hercules, and the strong connection seen between him and the Gauls, see Michael Wintroub, "Civilizing the Savage and Making a King," Sixteenth Century Journal, XXIX/2 (1998), 467-96.
76. Pe? tion, quoted in De Baecque, 138-9; anonymous verse anthologized in Poe? sies nationales de la Re? volution franc? aise, 18; Louis-Se? bastien Mercier, Adieux a` l'anne? e 1789 (n. p. , n. d. ), 3.
77. La Passion, la mort, et la re? surrection du peuple ("Je? rusalem," 1789), 5. On this general theme see especially Ozouf, "La formation de l'homme nouveau," 132-37. We will see many more examples in the next chapter.
78. Soanen, "Sur l'amour de la patrie" (see Intro. , n. 36), 1280. Similarly, the Jesuit teacher Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy, in his 1744 Latin oration De amore patriae: "we are born men and citizens," 6.
79. Conside? rations sur les diffe? rends des couronnes (see Ch. 3, n. 21), 25.
80. Cerutti, Discours qui a remporte? le prix de l'e? loquence (see Ch. 2, n. 41), 13-14.
81. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres, III, 364. This translation is Maurice
Cranston's.
82. Rousseau, Emile, 38.
83. Quoted in Ozouf, La fe^te re? volutionnaire (see Intro. , n. 81), 474.
84. See the discussion in Dupuy, "Gene`se" (see Intro. , n. 33), 130.
85. Discours sur le patriotisme, 10-11.
86. Ibid. , 82.
87. Ibid. , 85.
88. Joseph-Antoine-Joachim Cerutti, Me? moire pour le peuple (Paris, 1788), 63;
Rabaut quoted in Ozouf, "La formation," 125.
89. Quoted in Ozouf, L'e? cole, 33; in Ozouf, "La formation," 133.
90. Robespierre, July 13, 1793, in James Guillaume, ed. , Proce`s-verbaux du Comite?
d'instruction publique de la Convention, 6 vols. (Paris, 1891-1907), II, 35. This
speech was given on the day of Marat's assassination.
91. Danton, quoted in Julia, Les trois couleurs (see Intro. , n. 11), 123. Recognizing
the implications of his words, Danton continued: "No one respects nature more than I do. But the social interest demands that his loyalties lie there alone . . . you cannot remove your children from the national influence. And what should the reasoning of an individual matter to us in the face of the na- tional reasoning? " Deputy Prieur de la Co^te d'Or similarly told the French people that "your children belong less to you than to the patrie. " Prieur de la Co^te d'Or, Adresse de la Convention Nationale au peuple franc? ais, 16 Prairial An II (Paris, 1794), 3. Lepeletier's report is reproduced in Baczko, ed. , Une e? ducation pour la de? mocratie (see Intro. , n. 11), 345-86.
92. Re? impression de l'ancien Moniteur, no. 192, 779.
93. Joseph Lavalle? e, Manlius Torquatus, ou la discipline romaine (Paris, 1794), 57.
Notes to Pages 153-157 271
? Notes to Pages 153-157
272
Notes to Pages 157-162
? 94. 95.
96. 97.
98.
99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104.
Notes to Pages 157-162
105.
106.
Quoted in Rivoire, Le patriotisme (see Ch. 1, n. 40), 145.
Lavalle? e, esp. 10-11; Maximilien Robespierre, Rapport fait au nom du comite? de Salut Public Sur les Rapports des ide? es religieuses et morales avec les principes re? publicains, et sur les fe^tes nationales (Paris, 1794), 4.
Re? impression de l'ancien Moniteur, XVIII, 351.
Gilles Boucher-Laricharderie, De l'influence de la Re? volution franc? aise sur le caracte`re national (Paris, An VI), 2. My thanks to Sarah Maza for pointing this work out to me.
Ibid. , 38-49, quotes from 45, 49.
Ibid. , 51.
Ibid. , 76-77.
Ozouf, "La formation de l'homme nouveau. "
Quoted in Dupuy, "Gene`se de la Patrie Moderne," 249-250.
On this literature, see Introduction, n. 25, p. 222.
Re? impression de l'ancien Moniteur, Dec. 22, 1792, 803; quoted in Dupuy, "Gene`se de la Patrie Moderne," 217. See also Albert Mathiez, L'origine des cultes re? volutionnaires, 1789-92 (Paris, 1904), 103.
Inevitably, in the remainder of this chapter, I will rely essentially on second- ary sources. A comprehensive study of revolutionary cultural policies--at least one that takes into account recent research in revolutionary political culture--remains to be written. In the meantime, see the pioneering work of Hunt, Politics, Culture and Class, and Antoine de Baecque's well-informed survey of the eighteenth century in Antoine de Baecque and Franc? oise Me? lonio, Lumie`res et liberte? , III, 7-187, of Jean-Pierre Rioux and Jean- Franc? ois Sirinelli, eds. , Histoire culturelle de la France, 4 vols. (Paris, 1998). The National Convention alone, in its Committee on Public Instruction, gen- erated enough paper to fill the six massive volumes edited a century ago by James Guillaume. The standard works on the revolutionary education re- forms are H. C.
Barnard, Education and the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1969); Julia, Les trois couleurs du tableau noir; Baczko, ed. , Une e? ducation pour la de? mocratie; R. R. Palmer, The Improvement of Humanity: Education and the French Revolution (Princeton, 1985); and Isser Woloch, The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789-1820's (New York, 1993), 163-222. For a recent mise a` point, see Boulad-Ayoub, ed. , Former un nouveau peuple?
Quoted in Barnard, Education, 105.
"Moral education constituted the keystone of all the revolutionary projects": Julia, 194
Re? impression de l'ancien Moniteur, December 22, 1792, 802.
Ibid.
On the connections, see Julia, Les trois couleurs, 93, and 57-69. Jean-Louis
107. 108.
109. 110. 111.
Labarrie`re, "De la vertu du citoyen e? claire? " (see Intro. , n. 11), 66. Other im- portant precedents included reports by the physicians Gilbert Romme and Franc? ois-Xavier Lanthenas, also in Dec. , 1792.
112. Lepeletier, in Baczko, ed. , 352, 362.
113. Ibid. , 351, 371.
114. This point was keenly observed by Georges Dumesnil, La pe? dagogie
re? volutionnaire (Paris, 1883), 220-21.
115. On the revolutionary theater, see Rivoire, Le patriotisme; Emmet Kennedy,
ed. , Theaters, operas and audiences in Revolutionary France: Analysis and Rep-
ertory (Westport, Conn. , 1996); 76.
116. See Jeffrey S. Ravel, The Contested Parterre: Public Theater and French Political
Culture, 1680-1791 (Ithaca, 1999), esp. 191-97.
117. Louis-Se? bastien Mercier, Du the? a^tre, ou nouvel essai sur l'art dramatique (Am-
sterdam, 1773). On Mercier's ideas, see Gregory S. Brown, "Scripting the Pa- triotic Playwright in Enlightenment-Era France: Louis-Se? bastien Mercier's Self-Fashionings, between 'Court' and 'Public,'" Historical Reflections /
Re? flexions historiques 26/1 (2000), 1-27.
118. Edme-Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne, La mimographe, ou ide? es d'un honne^te
femme pour la re? formation du The? a^tre National, quoted in Boe? s, La lanterne magique (see Intro. , n. 44), 78. Other examples of calls for the theater to func- tion as an e? cole des moeurs can be found in Ravel, 191-97. See also the Cheva- lier d'Eon on the subject, quoted in Dziembowski, Un nouveau patriotisme (see Intro. , n. 33), 391.
119. These assertions are based on Gregory S. Brown, "Do Plays Make Revolu- tions? " paper presented to the Society for French Historical Studies, Washing- ton, D. C. , March, 1999.
120. L. W. B. Brockliss, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Cultural History (Oxford, 1987), 164, 166. The same was true of the ballets that accompanied the plays, and the long recited poems, called se? natus-consultus, which sometimes replaced them.
121. Titles included "La France victorieuse sous Louis le Grand," "Le grand monarque," "Le ge? nie franc? ais ou les fe^tes franc? aises," and "Le tableau de la gloire trace? d'apre`s les fastes du peuple franc? ais. " See the discussion in Boe? s, 26-44.
122. Melvin Edelstein, La Feuille villageoise: Communication et modernisation dans les re? gions rurales pendant la Re? volution (Paris, 1977), 68, 74. In general on the revolutionary press, see the excellent synthesis of Jeremy Popkin, Revolution- ary News: The Press in France, 1789-1799 (Durham, N. C. , 1990).
123. Edelstein, 74; see Cerutti's "Avis a tous les souscripteurs de 'La Feuille villageoise,'" reprinted in de Certeau et al. , Une politique de la langue, 285-87.
124. Popkin, Revolutionary News, 150.
Notes to Pages 162-165 273
? Notes to Pages 162-165
274
Notes to Pages 167-171
? 125.
126. 127. 128.
1. 2. 3.
4.
This description is taken from Schama, Citizens (see Ch. 2, n. 60), 831-36. The fundamental work on the revolutionary festivals is Ozouf, La fe^te re? volutionnaire. Condorcet is quoted in Labarrie`re, "De la vertu," 67. Reimpression de l'ancien Moniteur, 803.
Ozouf, La fe^te, 446-53. Ibid. , 441-74.
6. National Language
On the fe^te de la Fe? de? ration, see Ozouf, La fe^te re? volutionnaire (see Intro. , n. 81), 59-101.
Jean-Claude Meyer, La vie religieuse en Haute-Garonne sous la Re? volution (1789-1801) (Toulouse, 1982), 59,77.
Antoine-Hyacinthe Sermet, Discours prounounc? at dabant la legiou de Sant- Ginest, Pel. R. P. Sermet, Exproubincial des Carme? s Descausse? s, Predicaire? ourdinari del Rey, &c. (Toulouse, 1790).
"Never forget, my children and good Comrades, to whom the Apostle Saint Paul, the greatest Preacher who has ever appeared on earth since the birth of Christianity, addressed this language. It was, so that you may know it, to our illustrious Ancestors, to the children of those Gauls, numbering more than a hundred and fifty thousand, who left this country some three thousand years ago to go beyond the seas, to the end of the known world of the time, to the depths of Asia to found the proud City of Ankara and to people the province which took their name and was called Galatia. " Ibid. , 1-2. The Galatians were indeed descended from Celts called Galatae.
The best scholarship on Villers-Cottere^ts does not bear out the claims of lin- guistic imperialism. See Peyre, La royaute? , 58-91; Trudeau, "L'ordonnance de Villers-Cottere^ts" (see Intro. , n. 24). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centu- ries, the crown made several further attempts to impose the administrative use of French (edicts were issued for Be? arn [1620], Flanders [1684], Alsace [1685], Roussillon [1700] and Lorraine [1748]). But these measures without exception applied only to areas recently annexed to France, where, unlike in Brittany and the Occitan regions, even the wealthier bourgeois and nobles generally did not speak French, thus making the new provinces seem far more "foreign" to their new rulers. See Brunot et al. , Histoire de la langue franc? aise (see Intro. , n. 30), V and VII, passim; Peyre, 156; Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, "Les minorite? s pe? riphe? riques: Inte? gration et conflits," in Revel and Burguie`re, eds. , Histoire de la France (see Ch. 1, n. 56), III, 455-630, esp. 623- 27; A. Brun, L'introduction de la langue franc? aise en Be? arn et en Roussillon (Paris, 1923). In Brittany, French had served as the official language since the eleventh century. Most recently, on the question of multilingualism in early
Notes to Pages 167-171
5.
Notes to Pages 171-172 275
? modern France, see the important work of Cohen, "Courtly French" (see
Intro. , n. 24).
6. On Occitan, see Schneider, Public Life in Toulouse, 1463-1789 (see Ch. 1,
n. 62); also Philippe Gardy, ed. , Pe`ire Godolin: Le Ramelet mondin et autres oeuvres (Aix-en-Provence, 1984). The last old regime edition of Godolin's works was published in Toulouse in 1774 under the title Las Obras de Pierre Goudelin. On Alsatian publishing, see Franklin Ford, Strasbourg in Transition, 1648-1789 (Cambridge, Mass. , 1958), 207-34.
7. [Espiard de la Borde], Essais (see Intro. , n. 37), II, bk. V (separate pagination), 63.
8. Various examples are given by He? le`ne Merlin, "Langue et souverainete? en France au XVIIe sie`cle: La production autonome d'un corps de langage," Annales: Histoires, sciences sociales, XLIX/2 (1994), 369-94, esp. 384-85.
9. I have found only two projects for linguistic unification before the late 1780s: one by the educational reformer Vallange, in Nouveau syste`me (2nd vol. of Nouveaux syste`mes ou Nouveaux plans de me? thode) (Paris, 1719), 178-79, and one by Nicolas Legras, sponsor of a royal academy and colle`ge in the town of Richelieu, in Acade? mie royale de Richelieu (see Intro. , n. 20), 59, 77 (Legras was most concerned with the language of the nobility). Even treatment of peasant education rarely raised the linguistic question. See Harvey Chisick, The Limits of Reform in the Enlightenment: Attitudes toward the Education of the Lower Classes in Eighteenth-Century France (Princeton, 1981). Notes to Pages 171-172
10. Quoted in Peyre, La royaute?