French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Cultural History

Front Cover
Clarendon Press, 1987 - Art - 544 pages
At a time when the role of universities is being constantly questioned, this book looks back to their function during a period when the state--in this case, France--first demanded that institutions of higher learning be socially relevant. Using evidence from surviving student cahiers and professorial textbooks, Brockliss recreated the educational experience of the French professional classes in the age of absolutism. The picture that emerges is one of a higher education system playing a dual role within the culture: on the one hand, developing and promoting a justification of the divine-right monarchy; on the other, acting as a vital agent in transmitting and popularizing the new scientific and philosophical ideas that eventually contributed to the overthrow of the state.

From inside the book

Contents

Institutions and Personnel
13
Student Life
52
Summary
105
Copyright

13 other sections not shown

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information