Skolans tal om litteratur : Om gymnasieskolans litteraturstudium och dess plats i ett kulturellt återskapande med utgångspunkt i en jämförelse av texter för litteraturundervisning i Sverige och Frankrike

Sammanfattning: In the main study literary anthologies and textbooks used in the mother tongue subjects at upper secondary schools in Sweden and France around 1920 and 1980 are analysed with reference to the conception of literature-what counts as literature and why-and the proposed way of studying literary texts. Conclusions are drawn as to the potential functions of the study of literature, the character of the literary studies and their place in a process of cultural re-production. In the second part of the thesis, the results from the main study are used as a starting-point for an analysis where the characteristics of the different discourses on literature are connected to the educational institution and society. In the case of France, the roots of these characteristics are sought in the very long tradition of an education of the mind of the French secondary school. The results from the study may be summarized as follows:The discourse on literature of the school is understandable above all as part of a cultural re-production which concerns other things than literature; as an element of broader social control.This discourse has undergone great changes in Sweden during the period of study, but not in France, although the transformation of the economic structure in both countries and the increase in the fraction of a generation attending upper secondary school are much the same. One possible part of an explanation is a difference in the social anchorage of the state; another that the French study of literature has all the time represented a socially valid discourse.In France, the conception of literary texts and the way of approaching them, in the second half of the 20th century-according to textbooks accepted by the educational institution-still bore the mark of a tradition which is that of the education of the mind. This conception of texts, and this way of treating them, are such that there seems to have been question of a cultural reproduction in the strong sense, a reproduction of mental structures.