The Agrégation de Lettres classiques (Classics) and its peer, the Agrégation de Grammaire, are higher-level French competitive examinations held to recruit, in principle, senior secondary school teachers – though many of its laureates are in fact university teachers, whether lecturers or professors.
Upon its creation in 1766, the Agrégation included “Grammaire” and “Belles Lettres” amongst its sections, along with “Philosophie”.
The Grammaire competition was a mixture mainly of Classics, but also of studies in historical linguistics and Indo-European reconstruction.
A proportion of medieval and modern French literature was then added (slightly greater in Lettres Classiques than in Grammaire) making it virtually impossible for outsiders to succeed in the competition.
Universities specialising in humanities, but also other institutions like the École Normale Supérieure, offer a specific preparation course for the Agrégation de Lettres classiques.
Each year, the prescribed texts in literature are totally renewed, and half the ones in Ancient Greek and Latin are changed.
It is therefore not required to read extensively critical work on the authors (and some professors even warn their students not to) or engage in academic research about them ; the board of examinators expects the agrégatif to have above all a great personal knowledge of the text, irrigated by the reading of the foremost critics.