French baccalauréat 2027 (première syllabus)

The French examination taken at the end of première covers a national syllabus of twelve works, a quarter of which is renewed each year. For the 2026-2027 school year, it sets three works for each of the four objects of study: the novel and narrative, with Chrétien de Troyes's Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, Zola's Pot Luck and Simone Schwarz-Bart's The Bridge of Beyond; the literature of ideas, with La Boétie, Fontenelle and Françoise de Graffigny; theatre, with Corneille's The Liar, Musset's No Trifling with Love and a play by Nathalie Sarraute; poetry, with Rimbaud's Douai Notebooks, Francis Ponge and Hélène Dorion. The teacher chooses one work per object of study and studies it with an associated pathway. The technological track replaces Pot Luck with Thérèse Raquin. The texts by Ponge, Sarraute and Dorion, still protected by copyright, have no page here.

works 10

• NovelLancelot, the Knight of the CartLe Chevalier de la charretteChrétien de Troyes · 1180To rescue Queen Guinevere, Lancelot defies shame and climbs into a cart of infamy.Literature
• EssayDiscourse on Voluntary ServitudeDiscours de la servitude volontaireÉtienne de La Boétie · 1576A young humanist asks why peoples obey a single man, and answers that they consent to their servitude.LiteraturePublic domain
• TheatreThe LiarLe MenteurPierre Corneille · 1644A young man who lies with genius gets tangled in his own inventions and in a romantic mix-up.LiteraturePublic domain
• EssayConversations on the Plurality of WorldsEntretiens sur la pluralité des mondesBernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle · 1686A philosopher explains to a marquise, over evenings in the garden, that the Earth is not the centre of the world.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelLetters of a Peruvian WomanLettres d'une PéruvienneFrançoise de Graffigny · 1747Exiled in France, the young Inca Zilia writes to her lost fiancé and discovers Parisian society with astonishment.LiteraturePublic domain
• TheatreNo Trifling with LoveOn ne badine pas avec l'amourAlfred de Musset · 1834Two cousins who love each other wound each other out of pride, and a young peasant girl pays the price of their game.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelThérèse RaquinÉmile Zola · 1867Two lovers kill an inconvenient husband, then discover that the crime has not freed them.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelPot LuckPot-BouilleÉmile Zola · 1882Behind the façade of a bourgeois building of the Second Empire, adultery, intrigue and marriages for money.LiteraturePublic domain
• PoetryDouai NotebooksCahier de DouaiArthur Rimbaud · 1891In the autumn of 1870, the young Rimbaud entrusts Paul Demeny with twenty-two poems of love, flight and revolt.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelThe Bridge of BeyondPluie et vent sur Télumée MiracleSimone Schwarz-Bart · 1972A line of Guadeloupean peasant women, from the aftermath of slavery to the twentieth century, in the voice of the last of them.Literature