Abstract EN:

The thesis is an examination and a reevaluation of the founding speeches of the French Third Republic (1870-1882), the oral impact of which is too often neglected. It aims to show that the interaction between the grassroots audience and the main leaders of the Republic - such as Paul Bert, Louis Blanc, Jules Ferry, Charles Floquet, Victor Hugo, Martin Nadaud, Eugène Spuller, and especially Léon Gambetta - represents a way of solving the conceptual difficulties of that period. The methodological approach draws from content analysis, inspired by the works of Antoine Prost, from Chaim Perelman's New Rethoric, as well as from the semiotics of the Algirdas Julien Greimas orientation. The thesis shows how the public reacted to the speeches, and how the leaders adapted to the public's reaction, in an interactive setting considered as an educational process as well as one of breeding new and necessary concepts. The key concept of interactive education is developed throughout the thesis and gives way to a vision of society supported by the approaches og Marcel Gauchet, Jürgen Habermas, Claude Lefort and Paul Ricoeur. Vast archival research has, been undertaken so as to highlight the context of the great gatherings occasioned by the speeches. The study of the source material of the speeches led to the examintion of the clandestine republican brochures of the Second Empire. This thesis in the field of Education Sciences aims to elaborate an interdisciplinary epistemology at the crossroads of History and Political Philosophy.