French Literature Première Study Sheet 2026

Official French Première Curriculum — Épreuve Anticipée de Français (EAF) 2025-2026

The French Première exam (EAF) is a landmark assessment taken at the end of the Première year. The curriculum covers four core study areas spanning the major literary genres from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. Each area includes set texts and associated study paths renewed by the official bulletin.

Study Area 1: Poetry from the 19th to the 21st Century

This area explores how poets transform language to express emotion, revolt, dreams and beauty. Key movements include Romanticism (Hugo, Lamartine — the lyrical self, communion with nature), Symbolism (Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé — suggestion over description, sensory correspondences), and Surrealism (Breton, Éluard — automatic writing, unconscious exploration).

Essential poetic forms: the sonnet (fixed 14-line form, Baudelaire, Rimbaud), free verse (Rimbaud, Laforgue — abandoning regular metre), prose poetry (Baudelaire, Le Spleen de Paris), and the calligram (Apollinaire — text as visual image).

Key literary devices: metaphor, simile, anaphora, alliteration, assonance, enjambment, caesura, personification. Every device must be identified, quoted and interpreted in terms of meaning.

Study Area 2: The Literature of Ideas from the 16th to 18th Century

Writers harness literature to champion ideas, criticize society and question the human condition.

• Humanism (16th c.): Montaigne (Essays — self-knowledge, doubt, tolerance), Rabelais (Gargantua — satirical defence of humanist education).
• The Enlightenment (18th c.): Voltaire (Candide — irony against fanaticism and naïve optimism), Rousseau (Discourse on Inequality, The Social Contract), Montesquieu (Persian Letters — outsider's gaze on French society), Diderot (Encyclopédie).
• Argumentative genres: essay, philosophical tale, open letter, utopia, philosophical dialogue.
• Argumentative strategies: convince (logic), persuade (emotion), deliberate (weigh pros and cons).

Study Area 3: The Novel and Narrative from the Middle Ages to the 21st Century

• Evolution: medieval romances (Chrétien de Troyes) → psychological novel (Madame de Lafayette, La Princesse de Clèves) → epistolary novel (Laclos) → Realism (Balzac, Flaubert) → Naturalism (Zola) → Nouveau Roman (Robbe-Grillet).
• Narrative tools: narrator type (first-person, third-person), focalization (internal, external, omniscient), hero vs. anti-hero.
• Key works: Balzac's Le Père Goriot, Flaubert's Madame Bovary (free indirect speech), Zola's Germinal (social determinism), Camus' The Stranger (the anti-hero Meursault).

Study Area 4: Theatre from the 17th to the 21st Century

• Classical tragedy (Racine, Corneille): three unities (action, time, place), propriety, verisimilitude, catharsis. Phèdre — forbidden passion as fate. Le Cid — the Cornelian dilemma between honour and love.
• Comedy (Molière): Tartuffe (religious hypocrisy), The Miser (avarice). Types of comedy: slapstick, wordplay, situational, character, repetition.
• Romantic drama (Hugo): Hernani rejects classical rules, blends genres and registers.
• Theatre of the Absurd (Ionesco, Beckett): Waiting for Godot — existential void; The Bald Soprano — language loses meaning.
• Dramatic tools: double enunciation, stage directions, aside, monologue, tirade.

Exam Methodology

Written commentary (commentaire composé): Analyse a text outside the set works. Structure: introduction (context, text presentation, problematic, plan), 2-3 interpretive axes with quotations and device analysis, conclusion.

Essay (dissertation): Argue a thesis on a set work and its associated path. Three-part plan: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Each part requires textual evidence and precise quotations.

Oral exam: Part 1 (12 min) — linear explanation of a 20-line extract from the study list plus a grammar question. Part 2 (8 min) — discussion of a chosen set text with the examiner. Preparation: 30 minutes.