CAPES LETTRES MODERNES 2006-2007
P REPARATION A L ’ EPREUVE DE
V ERSION ANGLAISE
Enseignante : Sophie Alatorre
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L’épreuve : 4 heures. Dictionnaire unilingue autorisé
(de préférence les Advanced Learner's, que ce soit chez
Oxford, Cambridge, Longman...). Texte extrait d’un
roman contemporain (2e moitié du 20e siècle, en
général) d’une longueur moyenne de 400 mots.
Cour s : mar di 16h-18h tous les 15 j ours, sur 20
semain es.
Un concours bl an c aur a lieu au début de l ’an née
2007.
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TEXTES D’ENTRAÎNEMENT.
Deux textes courts pour commencer :
VERSION 1
Ann BEATIE, My Life, Starring Dara Falcon, 1997.
“I am so happy to have run into you,” he said, rising. He bowed slightly from the waist, hands
behind his back. For a second, a bee hovered above his hat, but it flew away before he
realized it was there. If it had stung him, I wondered if he would have shrieked, done
something more spontaneous. He was, himself, like someone in a time warp. If Dara was
having trouble connecting with Ibsen’s world, how could she be so magnetized by the odd
Mr. Quill ?
The answer : money. He was a wealthy man. When he spoke, the theater company quickly
and positively responded. At her audition, she told me, she had projected her lines to Edward
Quill in the back of the auditorium. She had taken pains to make sure that what she said
registered just slightly to the left of him, so that he did not feel the lines were being pitched to
him. It was an old trick ; when you did that, she said, it had the authority of an echo across a
vast space : the person who hears it believes whatever he hears because it is overheard — it is
completely convincing because it seems to have been discovered. Try it, Dara told me :
Whisper barely audibly to someone at a lunch counter, for example. Tell the man next to you
that he is a beast for abandoning the children, and the waitress who overhears it will instantly
hate him. Much more so than if she overheard what she took to be a simple argument.
“Works,” Dara said brightly.
VERSION 2
Alexandra FULLER, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, 2002.
In spite of their lack of funds, but with their usual brazen disregard for such details, they
bought a farm in Derbyshire with borrowed money. (…) Dad was selling agricultural
chemicals to suspicious farmers, Mum was sleeves-rolled-up running after two small children,
a goat, several chickens, and a hutch of rabbits whom she couldn’t bear to slaughter when the
time came to turn them into rabbit pie (…).
When the rain came in the winter and as far as the eye could see a grey shroud hung over the
hills (…). My parents were more broke than ever, but they were not going to rot to death
under a dripping English sky. They rented out the barn (now equipped with flush loos and
running water, and the cow shit scraped out to reveal scrubbed old stone floors) to gullible
city folks as ‘rural cottages’ and fled.
Dad went ahead to Rhodesia by plane. Mum followed by ship with two dogs and two
children.
When the ship veered into the Cape of Good Hope, Mum caught the spicy, woody scent of
Africa on the changing wind : raw onions and salt, the smell of people who are not afraid to
eat meat, and who smoke fish over open fires on the beach and who pound maize into meal
and who work out-of-doors.
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Un texte de longueur intermédiaire :
VERSION 3
Jonathan LYNN, Mayday, 1993.
Everyday, as the sun set over the ocean at the end of Sunset, he would return to his
Hollywood Hills hacienda, motoring smoothly through his fearsome, heavy, spiked gate that
creaked open automatically as he approached it – unless LA was suffering one of its frequent
power cuts, in which case he would find himself locked out. An ‘Armed Response’ sign was
welded across the gate’s steel bars to frighten off any crack-brained, thieving, gun-toting
addict who might otherwise scale the heights, break into the house and murder him with one
of those little Saturday Night Specials that look, and sound like cap pistols but which kill you
just the same.
In the beginning Ernest worried about the great divide between the rich in their Westside
mansions and the homeless sleeping out on the sidewalks downtown and on the coarse
tropical grass in the shadows of the giant palms on Ocean Avenue above the Santa Monica
seafront. He fretted about the effective apartheid that made Los Angeles, though chock-full of
self-styled liberals, as segregated as Johannesburg. He was bothered about the gang killings
and burning buildings just beyond the invisible frontier at Pico and Fairfax, only three or four
miles away and the broad-daylight rapes that took place at gunpoint and knifepoint on
beautiful sandy Santa Monica beach and even in the UCLA library right there on the campus
in the middle of Westwood Village. But gradually, on becoming an Angelino, he learned to
focus his anxiety on eating salt and red meat. Furthermore he never ate Chinese food if they
added MSG, he avoided caffeine and, wherever possible, diet sodas. After all, chemicals can
kill you.
VERSION 4
Penelope LIVELY, City of the Mind, 1991.
And thus, driving through the city, he is both here and now, there and then. He carries
yesterday with him, but pushes forward into today, and tomorrow, skipping as he will from
one to the other. He is in London, on a May morning of the late twentieth century, but is also
in many other places, and at other times.
He twitches the knob of his radio: New York speaks to him five hours ago, is superseded by
Australia tomorrow and presently by India this evening. He learns of events that have not yet
taken place, of deaths that have not yet occurred. He is Matthew Halland, an English architect
stuck in a traffic jam a person of no great significance, and yet omniscient. For him, the world
no longer turns; there is no day or night, everything and everywhere are instantaneous. He
forges his way along Euston Road, in fits and starts speeding up then clogged again between
panting taxis and a lorry with churning wasp-striped cement mixer. He is both trapped and
ranging free. He fiddles again with the radio runs through a lexicon of French song, Arab
exhortation invective in some language he cannot identify. Halted once more, he looks
sideways and meets the thoughtful gaze of Jane Austen (1785-1817), ten feet high on a poster,
improbably teamed with Isambard Kingdom Brunel and George Frederick Handel, all of them
dead, gone, but doing well – live and kicking in his head and up there guarding the building
site that will become the British Library. And then another car cuts in ahead of his, he hoots,
accelerates, is channelled on in another licensed burst of speed. Jane Austen is replaced by St
Pancras.
Thus he coasts through the city, his body in one world and his head in many.
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The city too, bombards him. He see decades and centuries, poverty and wealth, grace and
vulgarity. He sees a kaleidoscope of time and mood: buildings that ape Gothic cathedrals, that
remember Greek temples, that parade symbols and images. He sees columns, pediments and
porticos. He sees Victorian stucco, twentieth-century concrete, a snatch of Georgian brick .
He notes the resilience and tenacity and its indifference.
VERSION 5
J.-C. OATES, Unholy Loves, 1979.
And she can love him, after her days of lurid and humiliating anticipation? She cannot, for St
Dennis is simply too old.
Not merely old but oldmannish. Peering over his spectacles like that… his lips loose and wet
and his teeth so obviously and so painfully not his own: ceramic-white, too perfect. No one
would ever make teeth like that in North America, Brigit thinks.
She had wanted to love him – to fall in love with him – but it was to be a failure. In spite of
the liquor she has had. In spite of her tractable and desperate spiritual condition. Still, his
voice is beautiful. Papery thin and delicately modulated, the voice of the BBC broadcasts and
the single recording she has heard, Albert St Dennis reading selections from Hecate and
Lovesounds. Perhaps she can half-close her eyes and lose her footing gradually and fall in
love with his voice… ? (…)
Brigit Stott is thirty-eight and Albert St Dennis is nearly seventy-one, but that should make no
difference. Other, odder matches have transpired. She has known of a few; she has heard of
many others. He is a widower, and lonely. She is a recent divorcee, and very lonely. And
there is something to be said for the eerie depthlessness of those eyes. Imagine sinking into
bed with him! Being embraced by him! His hair is thin but unruly, charmingly unruly, and
perfectly white. Absolutely white. Colourless. A look of fastidious purity bone-dry beyond
immortality. (Mortality, Brigit thinks, is the unattractive grey hairs sprouting on her own
head. Hairs that are wiry and brittle, unlike the others; unlike what she thinks of as her own
hair).
In her imagination she had already loved him with a sinking-heatedness, a swooning girlish
asininity decades outgrown, resurrected now as if to spite her better judgement. But what to
make, in the Byrnes’ handsome living room, of this skinny old English bird with the potbelly
and the trousers with their frayed cuffs and the ragged dirt-edged nails and the clumsy job he
did shaving and the querulous drone of his voice and the fact that he is evidently half dead, or
pretending to be so… ? What to make of the wattled throat, the trembling hands, the sharp
creases in the cheeks the skull so prominently ridged above the forehead and speckled with
liver spots that show evilly through the thin white strands of hair… ? The disappointment!
The dismay! For she knows, swallowing another large mouthful of her drink, that nothing in
her life will be altered. She had hoped for another of her unholy loves – or perhaps it would
have turned out holy? – but it will not transpire. Nothing at all will happen.
Brigit Stott had been anticipating this party for weeks. You must come, you are first on our
list, Albert St Dennis will be delighted to meet you, Marilyn Byrne said.
VERSION 6
Erskine Caldwell, Trouble in July, 1956.
Jeff glanced uneasily at Judge Allen, his mind on the verge of urging him to try to persuade
the Judge to let him go down to the creek at least until daylight. He had faith in Judge Allen’s
wisdom at a time like that but the could not keep from remembering his wife’s advice to stay
away from Flowery Branch. If the crowd at Flowery Branch were given an opportunity to
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catch the negro before he went out there, he would not be running the risk of making a lot of
people switch their votes. His plurality in the last election was only one hundred and fifty-six
votes. He was still waiting for an opportunity to suggest that he go down to the creek and stay
at least until daylight when Judge Alien spoke.
“ How many men can you deputize at this time of night, McCurtain?” he asked.
Jeff’s heart sank.
“I hadn’t given it any pure thought, Judge. It’s hard to say, offhand. I reckon I could find a
few, anyway. Maybe everybody’s gone out to join the hunt, though.”
Judge Allen walked from behind his desk, kicking the night-gown with his knees. He looked
to Jeff like an old man getting ready to say his prayers.
“ You’d better get busy and deputize as many men as you can lay your hands on”, he said. His
voice sounded measured and authoritative in the high ceilinged room. “You ought to be out
there within the next hour and see what you can do without taking action. Just as soon as I can
determine which way we’re going to jump, I’ll send you word with the expectation that you’ll
act accordingly. In the light of a new day it may even appear wise for me to take steps to
scotch Mrs Narcissa Calhoun’s action. I would see to it that the court issued a writ of non
compos mentis. That would be effective in constraining her for some time to come.” He
started towards the door. “I’m glad I was able to catch you before you hid yourself down on
that creek, McCurtain.”
Jeff got to his feet, pushing his weight upward and balancing it on his legs.
“But, Judge,” he said protestingly, unable to hold himself back any longer, “a deputized posse
at a time like this might rub a lot of fur the wrong way. I’ve always believed in not going
against the will of the common people. Besides, I want to see this lynching kept politically
clean.”
Judge Ben Allen stopped in the doorway and turned around for a moment.
“This lynching is going to be as clean as a cake of soap, McCurtain,” he said. “I’m seeing to
that”. The Judge turned and walked through the doorway, leading the way out of the room.
When they reached the hall, Jeff went towards the door. Wardlaw held it open for him,
closing it noisily after he had passed through it.
VERSION 7
Concours blanc janvier 2006
David LODGE, Nice Work, 1988.
Monday, January 13th 1986. Victor Wilcox lies awake, in the dark bedroom, waiting for his
quartz alarm clock to bleep. It is set to do this at 6.45. How long he has to wait he doesn’t
know. He could easily find out by groping for the clock, lifting it to his line of vision, and
pressing the button that illuminates the digital display. But he would rather not know.
Supposing it is only six o’ clock? Or even five? It could be five. Whatever it is he won’t be
able to get to sleep again. This has become a regular occurrence lately: lying awake in the
dark waiting for the alarm to bleep worrying.
Worries streak towards him like enemy spaceships in one of Gary’s video games. He flinches
dodges, zaps them with instant solutions, but the assault is endless: the Avco account, the
Rawlinson account, the price of pig-iron, the value of the pound, the competition from
Foundrax, the incompetence of his Marketing Director, the persistent breakdowns of the core
blowers, the vandalizing of the toilets in the fettling shop, the pressure from his divisional
boss, last month’s accounts, the quarterly forecast, the annual review…
In an effort to escape this bombardment, perhaps even to doze awhile he twists on to his side
burrows into the warm plump body of his wife, and throws an arm round her waist. Startled
but, still asleep drugged with Valium, Marjorie swivels to face him. Their noses and foreheads
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bump against each other; the re is a sudden flurry of limbs, an absurd pantomime struggle.
Marjorie puts up her fists like a pugilist, groans and pushes him away. An object slides off the
bed on her side and falls to the floor with a thump. Vic knows what it is: a book entitled
Enjoy your Menopause, which one of Marjorie’s friends at the Weight Watchers’ club has
lent her, and which she has been reading in bed without much show of conviction and falling
asleep over for the past week or two. On retiring to bed Vic’s last action is normally to detach
a book from Marjorie’s nerveless fingers, tuck her arms under the covers and turn out her
bedside lamp, but he must have neglected the first of these chores last night, or perhaps Enjoy
your Menopause was concealed under the coverlet.
VERSION 8
Sujet de concours 2005
Jhumpa LAHIRI, “This Blessed House”, Interpreter of Maladies, New York, 1999.
The weekend before the party they were raking the lawn when he heard Twinkle shriek. He
ran to her, clutching his rake, worried that she had discovered a dead animal, or a snake. A
brisk October breeze stung the tops of his ears as his sneakers crunched over brown and
yellow leaves. When he reached her, she had collapsed on the grass, dissolved in nearly silent
laughter. Behind an overgrown forsythia bush was a plaster Virgin Mary as tall as their
waists, with a blue painted hood draped over her head in the manner of an Indian bride.
Twinkle grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and began wiping away the dirt staining the statue’s
brow.
“I suppose you want to put her by the foot of our bed,” Sanjeev said.
She looked at him astonished. Her belly was exposed, and he saw that there were goose
bumps around her navel. “What do you think? Of course we can’t put this in our bedroom.”
“We can’t?”
“No, silly Sanj. This is meant for outside. For the lawn.”
“Oh God, no. Twinkle, no.”
“But we must. It would be bad luck not to.”
“All the neighbors will see. They’ll think we’re insane.”
“Why, for having a statue of the Virgin Mary on our lawn? Every other person in this
neighbourhood has a statue of Mary on the lawn. We’ll fit right in.”
“We’re not Christian.”
“So you keep reminding me.” She spat onto the tip of her finger and started to rub intently at a
particularly stubborn stain on Mary’s chin. “Do you think this is dirt, or some kind of
fungus?”
He was getting nowhere with her, with this woman whom he had known for only four months
and whom he had married, this woman with whom he now shared his life. He thought with a
flicker of regret of the snapshots his mother used to send him from Calcutta, of prospective
brides who could sing and sew and season lentils without consulting a bookcook. Sanjeev had
considered these women, had even ranked them in order of preference, but then he had met
Twinkle. “Twinkle, I can’t have the people I work with see this statue on my lawn.”
VERSION 9
Sujet de concours 2004.
Doris LESSING, The Other Woman. A Short Novel, 1953.
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‘Well, Rosie?’ said George, challengingly, the misery of the sleepless night bursting out of
him.
‘Well what?’ temporized Rose, wiping dishes. She kept her head lowered and her face was
pale and set hard. Confronted thus, with George’s unhappiness, her decision did not seem so
secure. She wanted to cry. She could not afford to cry now, in front of him. She went to the
window so that her back might be turned to him. It was a deep basement, and she looked up at
the rubbish-can and railings showing dirty black against the damp, grey houses opposite. This
had been her view of the world since she could remember. She heard George saying,
uncertainly: ‘You marry me on Wednesday, the way we fixed it, and your Dad’ll be all right,
he can stay here or live with us, just as you like.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Rose after a pause.
‘But why, Rosie, why ?’
Silence. ‘Don’t know,’ she muttered. She sounded obstinate but unhappy. Grasping this
moment of weakness in her, he laid his hand on her shoulder and appealed: ‘Rosie girl, you’re
upset, that’s all it is.’ But she tensed her shoulder against him and then, since his hand
remained there, jerked herself away and said angrily: ‘I’m sorry’. It’s no good. I keep telling
you’.
‘Three years,’ he said slowly, looking at her in amazed anger. ‘Three years! And now you
throw me over.’
She did not reply at once. She could see the monstrousness of what she was doing and could
not help herself. She had loved him then. Now he exasperated her. ‘I’m not throwing you
over,’ she said defensively.
‘So you’re not!’ he shouted in derision, his face clenched in pain and rage. ‘What are you
doing then?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said helplessy.
‘He stared at her, suddenly swore under his breath and went to the door: ‘I’m not coming
back’ he said, ‘You’re just playing the fool with me, Rosie. You shouldn’t’ve treated me like
this. No one’d stand for it, and I’m not going to.’ There was no sound from Rose, and so he
went out.
VERSION 10
Sujet de concours 2003.
Penelope LIVELY, “The ghost of a Flea” in Pack of Cards, 1986.
He met her at the opening party for an exhibition of paintings by a friend of his brother’s. He
stood penned against a wall talking to no one with an empty glass in his hand and suddenly
there was this short girl with a soft inexorable voice at his elbow, saying things.
“Sorry?”
“I said, you’ve got such a kind face, I knew you wouldn’t mind my coming across. I mean, I
can always tell, just looking at people. Most of them here – well, I just wouldn’t…You see,
the thing is…”
He couldn’t hear the half of it. He bent over her, frowning with concentration. She had thick
long fawn hair that sometimes obscured her face and a physical solidity at curious variance
with some kind of manic tension. She alarmed him. She was called Angela. As the party
thinned out he learned that they were going to have a curry at a place round the corner and
then he would walk her back to her flat.
Over the curry, they exchanged telephone numbers. She said it was so lucky he was working
in Holborn because actually her office was only just round the corner. She said she was
terribly interested in painting, she’d done an art course herself but as therapy in fact, it had
been good, it had helped. After the meal, as they left, she said she was feeling a bit odd. Hang
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on a minute, she said, do you mind? She stood on the pavement her back against some
railings, staring, it seemed, at the passing traffic, a small stocky girl with something dogged
about her, dogged and enclosed. He wondered nervously if she was drunk, but she had had
only a glass of lager with the curry. After a moment she said, “I’ll be all right now, Paul, it’s
just I get this sort of breathlessness it goes if I keep still a minute. Shall we go?” He left her
outside the house in which she had a flat.
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