Le commentaire de texte — The Text Commentary

The commentaire composé

The commentaire de texte is the dissertation's twin in French education. Where the dissertation starts from a question, the commentary starts from a passage, usually a page or less, and asks the student to show how its form produces its meaning. French students practice it from the lycée onward, above all for the French exam at the end of the première, the bac de français, and they meet it again in literature courses at university. There are two forms. The explication de texte follows the passage line by line, a method used especially in oral exams. The commentaire composé reorganizes the analysis into two or three axes, each built on a set of devices and quotations; following the text in order in a written commentary is a classic fault, because it slides into paraphrase. The vocabulary is technical, procédé, champ lexical, focalisation, tonalité, and graders expect it to be used precisely. Two conventions surprise students from elsewhere. The analysis is written in the present tense, whatever the tense of the passage. And the student's own opinion of the text, whether it is good or moving, is almost never relevant; what is graded is the demonstration of how the text works. The passé simple, meanwhile, remains the tense of written narrative in French literature, and a learner who can recognize it, and produce it in the third person, can read most French novels written before the late twentieth century.