Literature contributions to the History of Education

Abstract

This dossier is based on the premise that literature has precious contributions to make to the history of education. From the outset, as far as the methodological domain is concerned, there is a remarkable dilation – accompanied, in its quantitative aspect, by that which also refers to diversity – of the sources and objects provided by literary works for the historian’s interpellation of the educational past. The exploration of this potential is intimately consonant with the movement of historiographical renewal emerged in the last decades of the 20th century, in the field of tout court history, and that comes a little later to the domain of history of education. Largely characterized by the protagonism of a sociocultural nuance, the appropriations made within the latter point, likewise, to new problems, which end up triggering new approaches, intensifying the dialogue of the history of education with other branches of the human sciences, especially around the mobilization of new theoretical repertoires.