Canada French-Speaking Literature

Canada French-Speaking Literature

Northern America

According to businesscarriers, Canadian literature of French expression only developed in the nineteenth century. For almost a century after the cession of New France to the English (1763), literary production was almost non-existent, as all the energies were devoted to the preservation of the rights of the French-speaking population. The documents of that period have a political-civil character and eloquence represents almost the only literary form, personified above all by Louis Papineau (1786-1871). The detachment from the motherland meant that the echoes of the great literary movements came late and that only after 1840 was born a poetic movement inspired by a romanticism tinged with nationalism, to whose awakening the Histoire du Canada contributed above all.by François-Xavier Garneau (1809-1866). Around the bookshop of Octave Crémazie (1827-1879), a poet with a broad epic as befits a culturally still primitive people, a circle of intellectuals and poets was created who with their works marked the Canadian literary rebirth: among them the poets Louis Fréchette (1839-1908), Pamhile Lemay, Nerée Beauchemin. Historians such as Abbot Ferland (1805-1865) and Abbot Henri-Raymond Casgrain (1831-1904), a patient researcher of every French trace in Canada, made an irreplaceable contribution to the movement. Almost all the fiction born from the cultural revival movement was published in the Soirées canadiennes (1861-65) or in the Foyer canadien (1863-66), which had Aubert de Gaspé (1786-1869) as its greatest exponent. At the turn of the century, the school of Montréal was created around the Parnassian J. Charbonneau (1875-1960), composed of symbolist poets such as É. Nelligan (1879-1941) or Parnassians, such as A. Lozeau (1878-1924), A. Ferland (1872-1943), P. Morin (1889-1963). The foundations on which the poetic current most linked to tradition rests continue to be Canadian history, landscape and tradition for a good part of the twentieth century. The novel with R. Laroque de Roquebrune, Ph. Panneton, C.-H. is based exclusively on these foundations. Grignon. The true model of all this literature remains for a long time Maria Chapdelaine (1914), by L. Hémon (1880-1913), a French who emigrated to Québec. But if on the one hand we cannot deny a profound historical and moral significance to the patient search for their own national physiognomy by Canadian writers and intellectuals, on the other hand it is necessary to underline the provincial character of most of their literary production up to the second. world War. The work of rejuvenation and opening up to the world of Québec literature, which is increasingly undergoing American influence, freeing itself from exclusively French models, was conducted above all by poets: Saint-Denys Garneaus (1912-1943), A. Grandbois (1900 -1975) and S. Routier. Among the most significant poets and prose writers, we mention R. Lasnier (1915-1997), A. Hébert (1916-2000), J. Godbout (b.1933), G. Roy (1919-1983), J.-G. Pilon (b.1930), J. Brault (b.1933), P. Chamberland (b. 1939). To these names must be added those of novelists such as M.-C. Blais (b.1939), Y. Thériault (1915-1983), R. Benoit (1916-1972), and R. Ducharme (b.1942), whose books have aroused great interest. With the foundation, by the poet G. Miron (1928-1996), of the “Hexagone” group (1953) and of many political-literary magazines, the concept of Québécitude (on the model of Négritude) and the literary value of the joual (local deformation of the French cheval), a substitute for the “European French” and an instrument of a literature open to formal innovations, but often poised between claiming regionalism and universalism. There has been a notable increase in non-fiction on Québec, with P. Vallières (1938-1998), who published, among others, Nègres blancs d’Amérique, 1969, and J. Marcel (Le joual de Troie, 1973). The seventies are also significant for the presence of women, which emerges with strong, violent, claiming texts, such as those of M. Gagnon n. 1938, Pour les femmes et toutes les autres, 1974, N. Brossard, n. 1943, Lamèr, 1977, and Le sens apparent, 1980), L. Bersianik (L’Eugélionne, 1976), F. Théoret, n. 1942; Bloody Mary, 1977). A separate place deserves, in the context of this feminine literature, M. Causse, with Voyage de la Grande Naine en Adrossie (1976). La Causse has also translated into French texts by Italian authors such as I. Silone, C. Pavese, D. Maraini. Towards the 1980s, French-speaking Canadian literature took on a more intimate orientation. Poetry, like the novel, raises the question of models. The language becomes freer, the French “québécois” is now affirmed as independent from that of the mother country. Emblem of this achieved autonomy can be considered G. Miron and M. Tremblay (b. 1942), dominant figure of the French-Canadian literary landscape, author of a cycle of theatrical works, the Chroniques du Plateau Mont-Royal. Among his most recent works, Un ange cornu avec des ailes de tôle (1995), La nuit des princes charmants (1995) and Contes pour buveurs attardés (1996). Among the most important novels published in recent years, we should mention those by L. Caron (b.1942; Le coup de poing, 1990; Les Hommes du Nord, 1992), by Anne Dandurand (b.1953, Un Coeur qui craque, 1990) and V. Lévy Beaulieu (b.1945 L’héritage, 1991). Singular is the work of R. Ducharme (b.1942), who reinvents his own language in Dévadé (1990) and Va savoir (1994), in which the funny side of the characters does not hide their despair, but emphasizes it. We should also remember H. Aquin (1929-1977), whose fictional adventures, told in an innovative language, are linked to his interest in the political fate of his native region. Among the most important works, Premier épisode (1965), Trou de mémoire (1968), Neige noire (1974). Already famous, G. Archambault (b.1933) with Le tendre matin (1996), Y. Beauchemin (b.1941) with Le second violon (1996), J. Gauthier (b.1947) with Chroniques d ‘Arcadie (4 volumes published from 1992 to 1996) and Antonine Maillet (b.1929) with L’Oursiade (1990). As for the last years of the twentieth century we can remember G. Vigneault (b.1928), a very famous poet, narrator and songwriter, of whom we mention Bois de marée (1992) and L’armoire des jours (1998) and F. Barcelo (b. 1941), novelist, author of Je vous ai vue, Marie (1992) and the black novel Cadavres (1998, Cadaveri); in 2000 he published Chien sale and in 2008 Premier roman pour Momo de Sinro). Also noteworthy is C. Jasmin (b. 1930), author of Le Gamin (1990), Pâques à Miami (1996) and Albina and Angela (1999), D. Demers (b.1956), A. Cousture (b.1948), of which we cite Ces enfants d’ailleurs (1992-1994) and Les Filles de Caleb (3 vol., 1985– 2003), P. Vincent (b.1943), author of L’Imosture (1995), P. Turgeon with Un dernier blues pour octobre (1991) and MJ Thériault (b.1945), daughter of the more famous Yves. Also noteworthy is the success achieved in this period by Canadian writers of Asian origin, whose works often deal with the theme of immigration and the difficulties associated with it. These include Ying Chen, born in Shanghai in 1961 but currently resident in Québec, who published the novel Immobile in 1998.. Finally, we mention M. Larue, F. D’Amour and M. Proulx.

Canada French-Speaking Literature