Literary Narratives on the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century French Elite Educational System: Rituals and Total Institution

by Frederique Van De Poel-Knottnerus, J. David Knottnerus

Via the theory of structural ritualization, Poel-Knotternus (French, Oklahoma State U.) and Knotternus (OSU, sociology) examine the total institutions that were French boarding schools for the elite primarily in the 19th century. Building on their 1999 book, The social worlds of male and female children in the nineteenth century French educational youth, rituals, and elites (Edwin Mellon), this couple posit that particular sequences of behaviors termed "ritualized symbolic practices" become central to life and therefore, predictive of future behavior. They scrutinize a sample of literary and other narratives of the male and female personal-social worlds engendered within this system. Lacks a subject index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

176 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2002