Table Of Contenttitle: French-Canadian Literature ACSUS Papers
author: Weiss, Jonathan M.; Moss, Jane.
publisher: Michigan State University Press
isbn10 | asin: 0870133969
print isbn13: 9780870133961
ebook isbn13: 9780585187952
language: English
French-Canadian literature--History and
subject
criticism.
publication date: 1996
lcc: PQ3901.W45 1996eb
ddc: 840.9/9714
French-Canadian literature--History and
subject:
criticism.
Page i
French-Canadian Literature
Jonathan Weiss and Jane Moss
Page ii
The Association for Canadian Studies in the United States (ACSUS)
The Association for Canadian Studies in the United States (ACSUS),
founded in 1971, is a multidisciplinary academic organization devoted
to encouraging and supporting the study of Canada and the Canada-
United States relationship in all its facets. ACSUS publishes a
quarterly scholarly journal, The American Review of Canadian
Studies, a regular newsletter, Canadian Studies Update, and hosts a
biennial conference atrracting over 600 participants. ACSUS is the
largest association of Canadian Studies specialists in the world.
Also published by ACSUS:
Northern Exposures: Scholarship on Canada in the United States,
edited by Karen L. Gould, Joseph T. Jockel, and William Metcalfe
(1993)
ISBN 1-883027-00-4
Copyright © 1989, 1996, The Association for Canadian Studies in the
United States, Washington, D.C. and Michigan State University Press.
Page iii
Acknowledgment
The ACSUS Papers were conceived to provide suitable core materials
for introductory college courses and solid background material for
more focused courses on Canada for undergraduates in the United
States. The first edition, published in 1989, was extremely successful
in serving this market. The concept of the series has withstood the test
of time and ACSUS is pleased to cooperate with Michigan State
University Press on this second edition.
This edition was made possible with the assistance of the Government
of Canada/avec l'aide du Gouvernement du Canada.
Editors:
Joseph T. Jockel
St. Lawrence University
Victor M. Howard
Michigan State University
Page 1
Preface
This book presents an overview of what I consider the most important
milestones in French-Canadian literature. It is not intended to be a
comprehensive a history of French-Canadian literature; such an
enterprise is far beyond the scope of a short monograph. Inevitably,
much is left out, but I hope that what is included will enable the reader
to delve further into the subject and to make some interesting personal
discoveries.
In the field of literature, the terms French-Canadian and québécois
are sometimes used interchangeably, but they are not entirely
synonymous. French-Canadian most properly refers to the literature of
Quebec (it can also refer to the literature of "French Canada," that is,
of Quebec and other French-speaking parts of Canada) before the
1960s, when growing nationalist sentiment throughout Quebec called
for the substitution of French-Canadian by the adjective québécois
(which I keep in the French, because no suitable English version
exists, although the noun form has been anglicized). A collection of
essays published in 1972 by Jean Bouthillette, titled Le Canadien
français et son double (The French Canadian and His Double), put the
problem succinctly: "The Canadian identity is a mirror which reflects
the image of the Other when we look at ourselves in it." In an attempt
to look at themselves directly, rather than through the mirror of a
Canadian identity, many French Canadians, especially those involved
in literature and other cultural enterprises, defined themselves simply
as Québécois, and, in the 1970s, this adjective came to imply a new
nationalist consciousness. The term québécois has more or less
endured, and I shall use it here except when referring to the earliest
periods of literary production.
It is not facetious, before embarking on this brief voyage into the
literature of Quebec, to ask whether or not there really is such a
literature. Isn't the literature of Quebec simply a branch of Canadian
literature? Or could it not be said to be a part of French literature,
conceived in its widest sense (after all, Georges Simenon, a Belgian,
was considered a French writer)?
Without attempting a definitive answer to a thorny philosophical
question, I think that the existence of Quebec literature as its own
entity can be shown in a number of ways. Common themes, a
common reality, and a common language (French) have inspired
writers in Quebec for more than a century, and even if some of these
themes are shared by other Canadians, there are enough differences
(the use of the French language is alone an enormous difference), and
the differences are important enough, to have mandated a distinction
that is recognized by most scholars as cultural, if not also "national."
To be sure, the fact that
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Quebec literature is written in French makes it a part of what is now
called the Francophone literature of the world (a category that
includes the literatures of African, Asian, as well as European
countries). But curiously, just as Quebec literature begs its difference
from English-Canadian literature because of the language in which it
is written, it also pulls away from integration into French and
Francophone literatures because of its cultural links with North
America.
A North American literature written in French: that is as succinct a
definition of Quebec literature as can be given. It is a definition that
poses the entire problem confronting writers in Quebec for more than
a hundred years: the culture of North America is predominantly
English; French is a predominantly European language. It is within
this contradiction that Quebec literature exists and flourishes, because
it is this contradiction that gives it its life force.
In the following chapters, titles of works are given in French, with
English translations in parentheses. Where an English translation of
the French-Canadian work exists, the English title given is that of the
translation, and it appears in italics.
French-Canadian Literature Before 1837
Explorers, Jesuits, and Others
To refer to some of the writings of New France (1935-1763) as
literature may seem pretentious. To be sure, the French who explored
the continent in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, the Jesuits
and other missionaries who tried to evangelize the Indians, and the
intendants and other officials who ran the increasingly prosperous
colony had little time to write anything but official orders, papers, and
reports. Yet some of what was written at this period, even though it
lacks the inventiveness and depth of sentiment of true literature,
deserves mention. For as the critic Gilles Marcotte has remarked,
"Literature, in Canada, is often only the accidental quality of writings
which, like those of our first explorers, are . . . void of literary
intention. . . . We will read some texts of Cartier as poems, and as
some of the most beautiful of our literature."
Many of these early texts are redundant, flat descriptions by
Frenchmen (some of whom spent little time in North America) who
never see further than the colonialist-missionary purpose that was
theirs. Others give evidence of true powers of observation and of the
will to put into (European) words the new land and its people.
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Jacques Cartier set out from Saint-Malo in France, under the orders of
François I, and made his way up the St. Lawrence river in 1534,
guided by Indians all the way to the cities of Stadaconé (Quebec) and
Hochelaga (Montreal). It was an exploratory voyage. In 1541 he set
out for another voyage, his last, this time (to please the church in
Rome) with the purpose of bringing Christianity to the heathen. Even
if it is not certain that Cartier himself wrote all the journals of his two
voyages to New France, what has come down to us under the name of
the explorer is interesting in its vocabulary, the dynamism of the text,
and its style. It is not only the first Frenchman's perception of the new
continent, it is also the Frenchman's perception of himself and of his
reaction to this new world. The original text is in sixteenth-century
French, as difficult to read as Rabelais (who was Cartier's
contemporary), but it is only through the original that one can gain an
idea of the vigor of Cartier's style.
Cartier describes the natural history of the St. Lawrence River; he
describes the birds that frequent the islands where he anchored, and he
gives Indian names to the birds, (for these species were unknown in
Europe). He tells of "the land that God gave to Cain" (the unfertile,
rocky earth of Labrador) as well as of the land "whose climate is as
temperate as that of Spain, and most beautiful to behold" (the land
near the Baie des Chaleurs). But the most human and ultimately most
interesting parts of Cartier's journals are his descriptions of the first
contacts with the native peoples of North America. Cartier is
impressed with their generosity and with the warmth they show to him
and his seamen. He learns words from them, terms to define their food
(a kind of prune they call honesta, nuts they call caheya), and he and
his men partake in their dances and celebrations. Cartier also, of
course, plants his cross, symbol of the king of France and harbinger of
missionary activity to come, and he has some success in convincing
the chief Donnacona of the spiritual value of Christianity. But his text
emphasizes the human rather than the religious side of his mission,
and the chapters in which he relates the terrible disease that affected
his men in Stadaconé in December 1535 make for dramatic, if
sometimes pathetic, reading.
Cartier's value today is to have been the last European to describe
Quebec before the imposition of European religion and values. His
texts are sometimes used today by novelists (such as Félix-Antoine
Savard) or poets (such as Gilles Vignault) who look nostalgically at
the purity of land before land ownership and at the naïveté of the
native population before corruption by the white man.
The other great explorer of this period, Samuel de Champlain (who
made his way up the St. Lawrence in 1608 to organize the fur trade)
left flat, uninteresting journals. But the Récollet Brother Gabriel
Théodat Sagard, who spent the
