Français | English
Repères, n°66/2022-2

Repères, n°66/2022-2

Commentaire, commentaires

Edited by Christine Boutevin, Marie-Sylvie Claude

Repères - Recherches en didactique du français



Literary commentary, litterary commentaries

This dossier focuses on text commentary as it is taught between the end of primary education and the beginning of higher education, and as it is approached in teacher training. In some of the contributions, commentary is defined in a broad sense as a kind of metatextual discourse, which groups together differently standardised forms of writing about reading, practised at different levels of the curriculum. In other articles, it is studied as a school or university activity which is assessed in examinations and competitive teaching examinations. Using various French-speaking contexts, the dossier examines the links of solidarity between these different forms of metatextual writing, and also their compatibility, given the different conceptions of reading and writing that underpin them. It questions the retention of commentary exercises that encourage highly distanced reading, particularly in view of the emergence, in practice, of literary reading, which is defined as the transaction of a reading subject with the text. The authors gathered here mobilise different theoretical and methodological frameworks, and often make comparisons between time periods, school systems, and levels of the curriculum, to observe to what extent the practice of commentary in schools can create a reader capable of grasping the issues of meaning and effect in the texts studied, and also of finding the means for personal development in his or her readings.