Recent theories of the social consequences of institutions point to aspects of class and ethnic relations that are not fully captured by conventional institutional perspectives. Using some of these recent theoretical contributions, this thesis analyzes the influence of institutional conditions on the mobilization of French and immigrant workers in late 19th-century northern France. Two main institutional structures are discussed: France's unique network of labour courts, and the socialist cooperatives created by Flemish workers in the 1880s. The empirical, chiefly archival evidence suggests two main conclusions: labour movements emerged and evolved strongly influenced by the judicial framing of labour relations, which they in turn sought to use and modify to their advantage; the institutional innovation of Flemish immigrant workers had a durable influence on the organization of labour politics in northern France, and contributed to their integration as active social and political participants.

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Abstract not available. / Until now, historians have devoted relatively little attention to the rich field of patients' struggles with chronic progressive disease. This study proposes to begin to fill this lacuna by examining in detail the meaning and implications of one central principle of nineteenth-century clinical medicine: incurability. Though the judgement of incurability is the product of a medical encounter, its significance extended well beyond the clinic. For being incurable in nineteenth-century France was a social event in the broadest sense, putting the individual at the centre of a complex web of people with different expectations and duties. Patients and their farnilies sought relief and solace within the confines of their homes and, frequently enough, in hospital. The physician was expected to prognosticate and to heal, while women, usually members of the immediate family or a religious order, carried out the duties of daily care. Either by choice or institutional diktat, many incurably ill individuals were visited by a priest or some other representative of the Church. Finally, their lives were deeply influenced by the decisions of local and, to an ever increasing degree, national politicians mandated to tackle questions of charity and social policy. Each chapter of this thesis will examine facets of the experience of incurability within the context of existing social structures: medical, religious, economic, and political.

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Juxtaposing historical evidence with fiction, this thesis probes into the social marginalization of Third Republic schoolmistresses reflected in literary stereotypes. Despite their manifold representation in novels, the general stereotype is still predominant: a displeasing teacher in misery. Mostly secluded in provincial posts, they suffered not only from material indigence and burdensome teaching, but also from the hostility projected from their surroundings. Under these unfavorable circumstances, many took refuge in professional devotion and abnegation. However, they sometimes developed an ideal of heroism and self-sacrifice, which were comparable to nuns’ religious credos. Women teachers’ political portrait is often left out of literary representation. Because they could not even defend themselves and have their interests protected by superiors, political engagement would mean little to their secluded lives. Yet in the masculine Republic, women educators shouldered a political task of forming girls as qualified mothers and companions who embraced republican values. The Republic’s reinvention of the secular faith and the lay School manifested its inheritance of the Catholic legacy it strived to eradicate, best demonstrated by its imitation of a laicized religious discourse, epitomized in literature by institutrices’ spirit of martyrdom. Through their professional efforts, they came into the public sight and increased their political impact. With their pacifist ideal, militant teachers safeguarded the Republic as well as republican schooling. Above all, as a result of their continuous struggles, they shattered the image of domestic women by proving themselves to be independent and public, shaping the New Woman “prototypes” of the new century. The “vices” of new career women were evident, for their new professional identity contravened conventional norms of gender roles. It was the teaching career that gave them an anomalous sexual experience, by depriving them of their womanly roles as wives and mothers. The image of the embittered “vieille fille” thus became a target for demonization, which was presumably a cultural motive behind Colette’s writings. She arguably employed the image of schoolmistress as a vehicle for exposing a public polemic between traditional and modern views on gender roles, in the context of major social transformations especially in thought. Schoolmistresses are a metonymy of French republicanism: a republican experiment which conflicted with women’s traditional functions and undermined the inveterate masculinist order. Third Republic schoolmistresses underwent a metamorphosis from domestic to public as they acquired new social roles. While institutrice literature shares profound bonds with autobiographical accounts, many testimonies also suggest an inclination of being attached to and even governed by novels. Despite the fact that literature is fabricated upon a universe of stereotypes, many teachers spontaneously chose fictional texts as the representative of their professional voice, making these “republican mythologies” a collective autobiography which articulated institutrices’ individual career pathos to a broader audience. / published_or_final_version / Modern Languages and Cultures / Master / Master of Philosophy

Vitalism is an underappreciated and often misunderstood idea. This thesis seeks to explore the historical origins and meanings of vitalism in 19th century France; tracing the transition from medical vitalism in the Montpellier School in the late 18th and early 19th century to a largely philosophical vitalism in the late 19th century, emblemized by Henri Bergson. / I argue that the decline of medical vitalism was brought about by the rise of scientific medicine, the experimentalism of physiologists like Claude Bernard and the growing influence of positivism in late 19th century France. I see the seminal moment of this transition from a metaphysical to a scientific world-view in the materialism-spiritualism controversy of the 1850s, which was sparked by the development of modern biology and the experimental life sciences. / Despite its general disappearance from mainstream medicine and science, vitalism continued to have echoes in a number of fields in the 20th century, and remains a concept relevant to our contemporary circumstances.

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Inspired by the work of the Swiss psychotherapist Alice Miller (For Your Own Good, 1983) on the negative effects of traditional childrearing practices in Germany, this thesis posits the existence in France of a similar tradition of "poisonous pedagogy," also founded on a set of moral principles and pedagogical techniques designed to desensitize, demoralize, and blame the child while protecting the parent/teacher. Working under the banner of Cultural Studies, I study examples of pedagogical discourse taken from a variety of cultural productions, ranging from moral treatises (lay and religious) and books on infant care (puericulture) to children's stories, primary school readers, and civics texts. Drawing on Michel Foucault's paradigms of power/knowledge and the "archeology" of knowledge, this study focusses on the various constructions of the child in nineteenth-century France. Beginning with an analysis of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's influential Emile ou de l’education (1762), this study traces the legacy of poisonous pedagogy in France during the July Monarchy, the Second Empire and the Third Republic. During the nineteenth century the discourse on children was in constant mutation, and opposing perspectives clashed throughout the century, although criticism of poisonous pedagogy became strong only in the last quarter of the century during the Third Republic. Child advocates at this time can be found in many different spheres-education, politics, medicine-but the contribution of literary writers to the discourse on children is perhaps the most dramatic of any group. The harshest criticisms of poisonous pedagogy and its concomitant construction of the child came at the end of the century in the form of two literary works: Jules Valles's L'Enfant (1879), and Jules Renard's Poil de Carotte (1894). By skillfully weaving powerful attacks on the techniques and principles of poisonous pedagogy into their texts, these two writers prefigure the pedagogical discourse of modern-day psychologists and child specialists.

Inspired by the work of the Swiss psychotherapist Alice Miller (For Your Own Good, 1983) on the negative effects of traditional childrearing practices in Germany, this thesis posits the existence in France of a similar tradition of "poisonous pedagogy," also founded on a set of moral principles and pedagogical techniques designed to desensitize, demoralize, and blame the child while protecting the parent/teacher. Working under the banner of Cultural Studies, I study examples of pedagogical discourse taken from a variety of cultural productions, ranging from moral treatises (lay and religious) and books on infant care (puericulture) to children's stories, primary school readers, and civics texts. Drawing on Michel Foucault's paradigms of power/knowledge and the "archeology" of knowledge, this study focusses on the various constructions of the child in nineteenth-century France. Beginning with an analysis of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's influential Emile ou de l’education (1762), this study traces the legacy of poisonous pedagogy in France during the July Monarchy, the Second Empire and the Third Republic. During the nineteenth century the discourse on children was in constant mutation, and opposing perspectives clashed throughout the century, although criticism of poisonous pedagogy became strong only in the last quarter of the century during the Third Republic. Child advocates at this time can be found in many different spheres-education, politics, medicine-but the contribution of literary writers to the discourse on children is perhaps the most dramatic of any group. The harshest criticisms of poisonous pedagogy and its concomitant construction of the child came at the end of the century in the form of two literary works: Jules Valles's L'Enfant (1879), and Jules Renard's Poil de Carotte (1894). By skillfully weaving powerful attacks on the techniques and principles of poisonous pedagogy into their texts, these two writers prefigure the pedagogical discourse of modern-day psychologists and child specialists. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

The writing of the French architectural theorist and critic Cesar Daly (1811-1894), editor of the influential Parisian journal, the Revue generale de l'architecture et des travaux publics, may be considered to be representative of the ambivalence of the supposed 19th century dialectic between scientism and metaphysical idealism. For Daly the physical and representational needs of society expressed in architecture were always and forever inextricably linked by the universal and permanent pattern of History. Although it was his fundamental thesis that the human sensibility was more important than any other consideration in the creation of architecture, his theory is paradigmatic of the contemporary ideology which attempted to define and systemise the expressive role of architecture according to rational scientific principles, and resulted in the concept of architecture as a prescriptive and predictive process. / Given the separation of architectural form and content, presence and meaning, and the consequent challenge to the possibility of shared experience initiated in the Enlightenment which is still an inherent part of our contemporary architectural thought, it is crucial to re-examine the architectural theory of the 19th century as the origin of the modern condition. This thesis is a critical examination of Daly's collections of polemical articles from the Revue as artifacts of architectural knowledge, through an analysis of their form and content in relation to other significant 19th century architectural texts.