Sujet du Bac Anglais 2024 · Métropole remplacement

Document A

Many Americans of Irish extraction turn their lineage into romantic tales of deep roots, bygone suffering, and picturesque desperation. Unfortunately for me, the story of the Joneses in Northern Ireland is awkward, unglamorous, and short. The family moved there from England in the mid-1950s, when my grandfather started working at a British naval base in Derry, a mid-sized city near the border with the Republic of Ireland. He died when my dad was a teenager [...]. My dad went to England for university; on break he met an American girl who was in art school in Wales. When she got into visa trouble, they moved to the U.S. and got married, which is where I showed up. [...]

Still, Derry remains the closest thing my father has to a hometown. As a child, I was terrified and entranced by his stories about the place, most of which involved masked men knocking on your door in the middle of the night and shooting you in front of your family, and all of which could not have seemed further away from my own sunny, Clinton-era youth. Now, the rest of the world seems to have caught my fascination. Somehow, someway, Northern Ireland is in the Zeitgeist 1 again. [...].

And then there's Derry Girls, the critically acclaimed Channel 4 comedy whose second season is currently streaming on Netflix in the U.S. A coming-of-age sitcom following four Catholic teens and their English buddy in 1990s Derry, the series is a fizzy antidote to the grimness that pervades most Northern Irish stories. [...]

Of the seven kids in my dad's family, six of them left Northern Ireland, scattering around the English-speaking parts of the globe. My cousin Rose is the daughter of the aunt who stayed, and in the '90s she too was a teenage girl [...].

Rose lives in London now, and after Derry Girls premiered, she was struck by the different ways it was perceived on either side of the Irish Sea. "Everyone from Northern Ireland liked the first series, but people in England thought it was weird," she said. "But the things they thought were surreal in England were not surreal in Northern Ireland." Like the way a daffy 2 aunt is bummed that a bomb means she won't be able to go tanning, or a blackboard where high-schoolers have to write down the differences between Catholics and Protestants. "People in England thought those things were totally silly and exaggerated for effect," she said. "But they weren't. Those things were true."

Nate JONES, "My Northern-Irish Family Reviews Derry Girls ", www.vulture.com, 2019.

1 Zeitgeist: the defining spirit of a particular period of time.

2 Daffy: silly.

Document B

Photograph of a mural in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2019.

Document C

Belfast is a city that has lost its heart. A shipbuilding, rope-making, linen-weaving town. It builds no ships, makes no rope and weaves no linen. Those trades died. A city can't survive without something to do with itself.

But at night, in so many ways, complex and simple, the city is proof of a God. This place often feels like the belly of a universe. It is a place much filmed but little seen. Each street, Hope, Chapel, Chichester and Chief, is busy with the moving marks of the dead thousands who have stepped their lengths. They leave their vivid smell on the pavement, bricks, doorways and in the gardens. In the city, the natives live in a broken world – broken but beautiful.

You should stand some night on Cable Street, letting the little wind pluck your flesh and listen, rigid and ecstatic, while the unfamous past talks to you. If you do that, the city will stick to your fingers like Sellotape.

Whether in the centre itself, or the places in which people put their houses, the city's streets, like lights in neighbours' houses, are stories of the done, the desired, the suffered and unforgotten.

The city's surface is thick with its living citizens. Its earth is richly sown with its many dead. The city is a repository of narratives, of stories. Present tense, past tense or future. The city is a novel.

Cities are simple things. They are conglomerations of people. Cities are complex things. They are the geographical and emotional distillations of whole nations. What makes a place a city has little to do with size. It has to do with the speed at which its citizens walk, the cut of their clothes, the sound of their shouts.

But most of all, cities are the meeting places of stories. The men and women there are narratives, endlessly complex and intriguing. The most humdrum of them constitutes a narrative that would defeat Tolstoy 1 at his best and most voluminous.

The merest hour of the merest day of the merest of Belfast's citizens would be impossible to render in all its grandeur and all its beauty. In cities, the stories are jumbled and jangled. The narratives meet. They clash, they converge or convert. They are a Babel of prose.

And in the end, after generations and generations of the thousands and hundreds of thousands, the city itself begins to absorb narrative like a sponge, like paper absorbs ink. The past and the present is written there. The citizenry cannot fail to write there.

Robert MCLIAM WILSON, Eureka Street, 1996.

1 Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910) was a Russian writer regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time.

Partie 1: Synthèse du dossier, en anglais [16 points]

Prenez connaissance de la thématique (« Arts et débats d'idées ») et du dossier composé des documents A, B et C et répondez en anglais à la consigne suivante (500 mots environ):

Paying particular attention to the specificities of the three documents, show how they interact to reflect the link between artistic productions and Northern Ireland's history.

Document A

Many Americans of Irish extraction turn their lineage into romantic tales of deep roots, bygone suffering, and picturesque desperation. Unfortunately for me, the story of the Joneses in Northern Ireland is awkward, unglamorous, and short. The family moved there from England in the mid-1950s, when my grandfather started working at a British naval base in Derry, a mid-sized city near the border with the Republic of Ireland. He died when my dad was a teenager [...]. My dad went to England for university; on break he met an American girl who was in art school in Wales. When she got into visa trouble, they moved to the U.S. and got married, which is where I showed up. [...]

Still, Derry remains the closest thing my father has to a hometown. As a child, I was terrified and entranced by his stories about the place, most of which involved masked men knocking on your door in the middle of the night and shooting you in front of your family, and all of which could not have seemed further away from my own sunny, Clinton-era youth. Now, the rest of the world seems to have caught my fascination. Somehow, someway, Northern Ireland is in the Zeitgeist 1 again. [...].

And then there's Derry Girls, the critically acclaimed Channel 4 comedy whose second season is currently streaming on Netflix in the U.S. A coming-of-age sitcom following four Catholic teens and their English buddy in 1990s Derry, the series is a fizzy antidote to the grimness that pervades most Northern Irish stories. [...]

Of the seven kids in my dad's family, six of them left Northern Ireland, scattering around the English-speaking parts of the globe. My cousin Rose is the daughter of the aunt who stayed, and in the '90s she too was a teenage girl [...].

Rose lives in London now, and after Derry Girls premiered, she was struck by the different ways it was perceived on either side of the Irish Sea. "Everyone from Northern Ireland liked the first series, but people in England thought it was weird," she said. "But the things they thought were surreal in England were not surreal in Northern Ireland." Like the way a daffy 2 aunt is bummed that a bomb means she won't be able to go tanning, or a blackboard where high-schoolers have to write down the differences between Catholics and Protestants. "People in England thought those things were totally silly and exaggerated for effect," she said. "But they weren't. Those things were true."

Nate JONES, "My Northern-Irish Family Reviews Derry Girls ", www.vulture.com, 2019.

1 Zeitgeist: the defining spirit of a particular period of time.

2 Daffy: silly.

Document B

Photograph of a mural in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2019.

Document C

Belfast is a city that has lost its heart. A shipbuilding, rope-making, linen-weaving town. It builds no ships, makes no rope and weaves no linen. Those trades died. A city can't survive without something to do with itself.

But at night, in so many ways, complex and simple, the city is proof of a God. This place often feels like the belly of a universe. It is a place much filmed but little seen. Each street, Hope, Chapel, Chichester and Chief, is busy with the moving marks of the dead thousands who have stepped their lengths. They leave their vivid smell on the pavement, bricks, doorways and in the gardens. In the city, the natives live in a broken world – broken but beautiful.

You should stand some night on Cable Street, letting the little wind pluck your flesh and listen, rigid and ecstatic, while the unfamous past talks to you. If you do that, the city will stick to your fingers like Sellotape.

Whether in the centre itself, or the places in which people put their houses, the city's streets, like lights in neighbours' houses, are stories of the done, the desired, the suffered and unforgotten.

The city's surface is thick with its living citizens. Its earth is richly sown with its many dead. The city is a repository of narratives, of stories. Present tense, past tense or future. The city is a novel.

Cities are simple things. They are conglomerations of people. Cities are complex things. They are the geographical and emotional distillations of whole nations. What makes a place a city has little to do with size. It has to do with the speed at which its citizens walk, the cut of their clothes, the sound of their shouts.

But most of all, cities are the meeting places of stories. The men and women there are narratives, endlessly complex and intriguing. The most humdrum of them constitutes a narrative that would defeat Tolstoy 1 at his best and most voluminous.

The merest hour of the merest day of the merest of Belfast's citizens would be impossible to render in all its grandeur and all its beauty. In cities, the stories are jumbled and jangled. The narratives meet. They clash, they converge or convert. They are a Babel of prose.

And in the end, after generations and generations of the thousands and hundreds of thousands, the city itself begins to absorb narrative like a sponge, like paper absorbs ink. The past and the present is written there. The citizenry cannot fail to write there.

Robert MCLIAM WILSON, Eureka Street, 1996.

1 Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910) was a Russian writer regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time.

Partie 2: Traduction, en français (4 points)

Traduisez en français le passage suivant du document C (lignes 19 à 24):

Cities are simple things. They are conglomerations of people. Cities are complex things. They are the geographical and emotional distillations of whole nations. What makes a place a city has little to do with size. It has to do with the speed at which its citizens walk, the cut of their clothes, the sound of their shouts.

But most of all, cities are the meeting places of stories. The men and women there are narratives, endlessly complex and intriguing.

Document A

The scene takes place at Lady Hunstanton’s. Lady Hunstanton, Miss Hester Worsley, and other ladies are having a conversation.

LADY HUNSTANTON. I hear you have such pleasant society in America. Quite like our own in places, my son wrote to me.

HESTER. There are cliques in America as elsewhere, Lady Hunstanton. But true American society consists simply of all the good women and good men we have in our country.

LADY HUNSTANTON. What a sensible system, and I dare say quite pleasant too. I am afraid in England we have too many artificial social barriers. We don't see as much as we should of the middle and lower classes.

HESTER. In America we have no lower classes.

LADY HUNSTANTON. Really? What a very strange arrangement!

MRS. ALLONBY. What is that dreadful girl talking about?

LADY STUTFIELD. She is painfully natural, is she not?

LADY CAROLINE. There are a great many things you haven't got in America, I am told, Miss Worsley. They say you have no ruins, and no curiosities.

MRS. ALLONBY. [ To LADY STUTFIELD.] What nonsense! They have their mothers and their manners.

HESTER. The English aristocracy supply us with our curiosities, Lady Caroline. They are sent over to us every summer, regularly, in the steamers, and propose to us the day after they land. As for ruins, we are trying to build up something that will last longer than brick or stone. [ Gets up to take her fan from table. ]

LADY HUNSTANTON. What is that, dear? Ah, yes, an iron Exhibition, is it not, at that place that has the curious name?

HESTER. [ Standing by table. ] We are trying to build up life, Lady Hunstanton, on a better, truer, purer basis than life rests on here. This sounds strange to you all, no doubt. How could it sound other than strange? You rich people in England, you don't know how you are living. How could you know? You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. Living, as you all do, on others and by them, you sneer at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season. With all your pomp and wealth and art you don't know how to live—you don't even know that. You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing. You have lost life's secret. Oh, your English society seems to me shallow, selfish, foolish. It has blinded its eyes, and stopped its ears.

Oscar WILDE, A Woman of No Importance, 1893.

Document B

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph Ellis recounted an exchange in his 2018 book, American Dialogue, between John Adams and his friend and rival Thomas Jefferson 1 about the state of aristocracy in the new republic.

Adams’ chief heresy was his direct refutation of Jefferson’s most famous words, that “all men are created equal.” Perhaps in some lofty humanistic sense this was true, Adams wrote, but “Inequalities of Mind and Body are so established by God Almighty in the constitution of Human Nature that no Art or policy can ever plain them down to a level.” Aristocracies, he therefore insisted, were an inevitable and permanent fixture in all human societies—including the young republic he and Jefferson had helped into being.

Jefferson wrote back to suggest his friend’s argument was true of Europe, where feudal privileges, inherited titles, and limited economic opportunities created conditions that sustained class distinctions. In America, though, the absence of laws such as primogeniture 2 and entail, and the existence of an unspoiled continent, meant “everyone may have land to labor for himself as he chooses,” and thus enduring elites were unlikely here. Given such favorable conditions, Jefferson argued, it was reasonable to expect that “rank, and birth, and tinsel-aristocracy will finally shrink into insignificance,” resulting in a roughly egalitarian, middle-class society.

Adams was unconvinced. “No Romance could be more amusing,” he replied, than the belief that the United States would prove an exception to the dominant pattern of economic inequality throughout history. “As long as Property exists,” he observed, “it will accumulate in Individuals and Families [...].”

During a subsequent interview for my new book about America’s superrich, I asked Gabriel Zucman, an economist and expert on economic inequality at the University of California, Berkeley, which founder’s 3 outlook he thought was more prescient. He replied that our situation in America today is arguably worse than the one Adams feared: not a hereditary aristocracy but an economic one “that can present itself as more legitimate than the old-world aristocracy, where you were rich and powerful for totally arbitrary reasons.”

Joseph J. ELLIS, American Dialogue, 2018.

1 John Adams and Thomas Jefferson belonged to a group of American leaders (the Founding Fathers) who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

2 Primogeniture: inheritance to the eldest son.

3 Founder: a Founding Father.

Document C

Partie 1: Synthèse du dossier, en anglais (16 points)

Prenez connaissance de la thématique ci-dessus et du dossier composé des documents A, B et C et répondez en anglais à la consigne suivante (500 mots environ):

Paying particular attention to the specificities of the three documents, show how they interact to illustrate the way aristocracy has evolved through time and space.

Document A

The scene takes place at Lady Hunstanton’s. Lady Hunstanton, Miss Hester Worsley, and other ladies are having a conversation.

LADY HUNSTANTON. I hear you have such pleasant society in America. Quite like our own in places, my son wrote to me.

HESTER. There are cliques in America as elsewhere, Lady Hunstanton. But true American society consists simply of all the good women and good men we have in our country.

LADY HUNSTANTON. What a sensible system, and I dare say quite pleasant too. I am afraid in England we have too many artificial social barriers. We don't see as much as we should of the middle and lower classes.

HESTER. In America we have no lower classes.

LADY HUNSTANTON. Really? What a very strange arrangement!

MRS. ALLONBY. What is that dreadful girl talking about?

LADY STUTFIELD. She is painfully natural, is she not?

LADY CAROLINE. There are a great many things you haven't got in America, I am told, Miss Worsley. They say you have no ruins, and no curiosities.

MRS. ALLONBY. [ To LADY STUTFIELD.] What nonsense! They have their mothers and their manners.

HESTER. The English aristocracy supply us with our curiosities, Lady Caroline. They are sent over to us every summer, regularly, in the steamers, and propose to us the day after they land. As for ruins, we are trying to build up something that will last longer than brick or stone. [ Gets up to take her fan from table. ]

LADY HUNSTANTON. What is that, dear? Ah, yes, an iron Exhibition, is it not, at that place that has the curious name?

HESTER. [ Standing by table. ] We are trying to build up life, Lady Hunstanton, on a better, truer, purer basis than life rests on here. This sounds strange to you all, no doubt. How could it sound other than strange? You rich people in England, you don't know how you are living. How could you know? You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. Living, as you all do, on others and by them, you sneer at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season. With all your pomp and wealth and art you don't know how to live—you don't even know that. You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing. You have lost life's secret. Oh, your English society seems to me shallow, selfish, foolish. It has blinded its eyes, and stopped its ears.

Oscar WILDE, A Woman of No Importance, 1893.

Document B

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph Ellis recounted an exchange in his 2018 book, American Dialogue, between John Adams and his friend and rival Thomas Jefferson 1 about the state of aristocracy in the new republic.

Adams’ chief heresy was his direct refutation of Jefferson’s most famous words, that “all men are created equal.” Perhaps in some lofty humanistic sense this was true, Adams wrote, but “Inequalities of Mind and Body are so established by God Almighty in the constitution of Human Nature that no Art or policy can ever plain them down to a level.” Aristocracies, he therefore insisted, were an inevitable and permanent fixture in all human societies—including the young republic he and Jefferson had helped into being.

Jefferson wrote back to suggest his friend’s argument was true of Europe, where feudal privileges, inherited titles, and limited economic opportunities created conditions that sustained class distinctions. In America, though, the absence of laws such as primogeniture 2 and entail, and the existence of an unspoiled continent, meant “everyone may have land to labor for himself as he chooses,” and thus enduring elites were unlikely here. Given such favorable conditions, Jefferson argued, it was reasonable to expect that “rank, and birth, and tinsel-aristocracy will finally shrink into insignificance,” resulting in a roughly egalitarian, middle-class society.

Adams was unconvinced. “No Romance could be more amusing,” he replied, than the belief that the United States would prove an exception to the dominant pattern of economic inequality throughout history. “As long as Property exists,” he observed, “it will accumulate in Individuals and Families [...].”

During a subsequent interview for my new book about America’s superrich, I asked Gabriel Zucman, an economist and expert on economic inequality at the University of California, Berkeley, which founder’s 3 outlook he thought was more prescient. He replied that our situation in America today is arguably worse than the one Adams feared: not a hereditary aristocracy but an economic one “that can present itself as more legitimate than the old-world aristocracy, where you were rich and powerful for totally arbitrary reasons.”

Joseph J. ELLIS, American Dialogue, 2018.

1 John Adams and Thomas Jefferson belonged to a group of American leaders (the Founding Fathers) who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

2 Primogeniture: inheritance to the eldest son.

3 Founder: a Founding Father.

Document C

Partie 2: Traduction, en français (4 points)

Traduisez en français le passage du document A (lignes 24 à 30):

This sounds strange to you all, no doubt. How could it sound other than strange? You rich people in England, you don’t know how you are living. How could you know? You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. Living, as you all do, on others and by them, you sneer at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season. With all your pomp and wealth and art you don’t know how to live […].