Trois siècles de métissage culturel

This article is the final chapter of book which is to appear this year on the rise of literacy in France from the 17th to the 20th centuries. It seeks to show the meaning in terms of anthropology, of this long process of acculturation which lasted for three centuries. From the time of Louis XIV to Jules Ferry, rural France was divided : there were those who had access to the written word and those who did not. These two Frances did not become a cultural whole until the beginning of the 20th century. In this respect, the authors not only distinguish two types of peasant communities and their spatial distribution, they establish an opposition between what until the middle of the 19th century were the two successive types of learning, reading and writing, and identify them as the two poles in the process of eliminating illiteracy. Reading, which ressembles the memorisation of sacred texts, does not change the traditional mode of oral communication. It is the ability to write that constitutes the modern individual, his private domain, and his relationship with the past and with the State, through which he becomes a part of the national community.Furet François, Ozouf Jacques. Trois siècles de métissage culturel. In: Annales. Economies, sociétés, civilisations. 32ᵉ année, N. 3, 1977. pp. 488-502