Well, that was fun.
Three commentaries on French texts (the commentaries were in English), in an hour-and-a-half.
This was the final exam for “Language, Power, and the Making of the French Nation”, my favourite module at the moment.
Basically, we could have been asked on any six of 84 French texts from the last 1200 years. Fortunately, the six that we did get, I knew, so it was just a question of picking the three I felt best about.
So, an extract from the founding statutes of the Académie Française, and an extract from the loi Deixonne of 1951, which finally allowed the French people to speak something other than French (Breton, Basque, Occitan).
And an extract from “Parlez-Vous Franglais?”. Unfortunately not the Miles Kington version, but rather a more academic version of said text. All the same, I never thought I would be answering a question in a French exam using words such as “la plus glamorous ballet-dancer in the world“, “pin-up boy“, and “il déteste le petting” (don’t ask about the storyline…).
Tomorrow, I have “Literature and Society in Twentieth-Century France”. Which, potentially, means a question in which I can use the French words “Hollywoodienne“, “un travelling“, and “Flash-back“.
What fun.