From 2025, future teachers in the French school system will have to look at Gaston Miron (1928-1996) and study his work. The poems of The scrapped manthis book in constant development during the writer’s lifetime, is now part of the aggregation competition program.
In the French university system, aggregation allows future professors to obtain important positions. According to the Ministry of National Education, “to teach in a high school, in a preparatory class or more exceptionally in a college, you must obtain the aggregation exam”.
Widow of the poet, professor emeritus at Laval University, Marie-Andrée Beaudet is in France to support the dissemination of The scrapped man in these new circumstances. Reached in Paris while she was expected at the Gaston-Miron library, she explains that “the aggregation is an extremely prestigious and important competition in the French university system. Candidates have to pass a written exam – a large, very structured essay – and an oral exam. It is in fact a recruitment competition for future teachers from high schools, universities and colleges. You need a master’s degree to apply. Many called, very few elected. »
The competition is prepared several months in advance, by following specific training, during conferences for example which extend into documentary material.
On Monday, Marie-Andrée Beaudet met aspiring professors from Paris Nanterre University. His intervention was broadcast to candidates for aggregation throughout France. Friday, she takes part in a meeting to launch a digital critical edition project of The scrapped man. She will be at the Sorbonne next week for a meeting with around a hundred other candidates for aggregation. Other meetings of this type will subsequently take place elsewhere, including at the University of Lorraine in Nancy.
More sensitive to the work of Miron
Marie-Andrée Beaudet is at the origin of the publishing work following the death of the writer in 1996. She welcomes the effects that these training courses will have in France “for the future teaching of Gaston’s work and Quebec literature. A trickle-down effect is in fact predictable since future masters will now be more sensitive to Miron’s work and, therefore, to all the literature produced on the banks of the St. Lawrence River.
Is there a similar initiative that would encourage future teachers in Quebec to also read Miron’s work more thoroughly? “To my knowledge, no,” replies Marie-Andrée Beaudet.
In France, the edition of The scrapped man published by Gallimard only includes the poems, while the original North American edition also includes prose texts.
In addition to Miron’s famous book, future French teachers will have to read and delve into the collections of two other poets this year. First of all, Indian poems by the Guatemalan writer and diplomat Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899-1974).
Next, a collection by Joy Harjo, born in 1951 in Oklahoma and winner of the Library of Congress in the United States. In American dawnJoy Harjo recalls a major deportation of indigenous nations in the 19the century.
Even if these three books appear very different, both in their form and their language, they all have a strong political and memorial content.