The birth of a country
Logic would have it that the story begins in 1608, when Samuel de Champlain founded the city of Québec, but that would be to deny the value and interest of the writings of visitors to New France, such as Jacques Cartier, the French navigator who first explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence. While he is credited with coining the name "Canada" - no doubt a distortion of the Iroquois word "kanata" - he also left his Relationships to posterity. Although all the original manuscripts have been lost, some have only been discovered through translations, and there is some doubt as to the true identity of the author of these travelogues, they are nonetheless fascinating and should be included in the library of all curious readers, who will find their happiness in the precious BNF editions, which also publish Samuel de Champlain's Des sauvages.
In the 17th century, the major preoccupations were far removed from literature: the establishment of the colony was perilous, and the following century saw the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the French against the English and resulted, on this side of the Atlantic, in the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, by which the former ceded Canada to the latter. From this long, troubled period, it is nevertheless interesting to note the extensive correspondence of Marie de l'Incarnation, an Ursuline nun who left Tours for Quebec in 1639. Initially thwarted in her vocation, the missionary became a mother, and it was to her son Claude, who remained on the Old Continent, that she recounted her experiences until his death in 1672. Encounters with native peoples also inspired chronicles, and the work of anthropologist Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce (1666-1716) was a sensation in the 18th century, rivaling that of historian Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix (1682-1761). Last but not least, the famous Louis-Antoine de Bougainville took part in the Conquest's war against New England, and even though, as a bilingual, he had to negotiate his country's surrender, these episodes figure prominently in his Memoirs.
A delicate balance
The British regime then tried, unsuccessfully, to assimilate the Franco-Catholic settlers. This was only the first stage in the establishment of a fragile balance that, over the years, would see two languages, two cultures and two religions living side by side. Beyond the political aspect and its many twists and turns, it's the French language of Quebec that is at stake, as much in terms of the threats to which it will be subjected as in its specificity, which from now on will evolve far from Parisian influence. This struggle took on patriotic overtones in the 19th century, which began with the publication of what is generally considered the first French-Canadian novel: L'Influence d'un livre, by Philippe Aubert de Gaspé fils (1814-1841), published in 1837 and republished in 1864 by Henri-Raymond Casgrain under the title Le Chercheur de trésors. Our good censor, who was also a man of the cloth, did much to safeguard Canadian literature, and was a pioneer in the critical approach to it. His meeting with Octave Crémazie (1827-1879), "Quebec's first national poet" and also a bookseller, was decisive and led to the creation of L'École littéraire (or patriotique) de Québec. This rather Romantic, Catholic-influenced movement rallied around two publications: Les Soirées canadiennes, created in 1861, and Le Foyer canadien, in 1863. Prominent members of this cenacle included Antoine Gérin-Lajoie (1824-1882), who penned the novel Jean Rivard and the song Un Canadien errant, and Hubert LaRue (1833-1881), a physician who also wrote for other magazines, although Abbé Casgrain never minimized the influence of their elder François-Xavier Garneau (1809-1866), famous for L'Histoire du Canada, which has remained a classic, and whose biography he wrote. Henri-Raymond Casgrain then devoted himself to travel, and some of his works were awarded prizes by the Académie française.
Fortunately, the flame was not allowed to die out before it was fed by L'École littéraire de Montréal. On the initiative of poet Jean Charbonneau and his writer acolyte Paul de Martigny, the first session was held on November 7, 1895. Germain Beaulieu was president, and Louvigny de Montigny helped out. The "exotists" drew their inspiration from elsewhere, benefiting from influences as diverse as Symbolism and the French Parnassians. In 1897, the circle welcomed a very young man, Émile Nelligan, a dazzling comet who would illuminate Quebec poetry. This ardent admirer of Baudelaire, an absolute romantic in all his themes, from childhood nostalgia to feminine beauty, won the admiration of all with his declamation of La Romance du vin on May 26, 1899. It was to be his swan song, however, as shortly afterwards, when he was not yet 20, he was committed for mental disorders, and remained locked up until his last breath in 1941. His friend Louis Dantin (1865-1945) collected his writings and had them published in 1903, beginning his preface with the terrible words "Émile Nelligan est mort" (Émile Nelligan is dead), foreshadowing that divine inspiration had finally dried up.
The École littéraire de Montréal, for its part, published Les Soirées du Château de Ramezay in 1900, a collective work featuring the conferences held up to that point, then seemed to fall into a certain lethargy from which it would not really emerge until 1909, with the launch of a new magazine, Terroir. The magazine's relative success can perhaps be explained by a line that strayed too far from the association's original aims, but at the same time failed to convince the enthusiasts of a current that was then becoming predominant, that of the "terroirists".
Although regionalist literature had been around since the mid-19th century, the movement gained momentum in the early 20th century with the creation of the Société du parler français au Canada, spearheaded by two Laval University professors, Adjutor Rivard and Stanislas-Alfred Lortie. At the same time, clergyman and future rector Camille Roy began work on a manual of French-Canadian literature, first published in 1907, which met with immediate success. The aim was twofold: to assert the originality of the Québécois language, in detachment from and even opposition to French from France, and to extol traditional values such as the land, the family and religion. The most telling example is Maria Chapdelaine, written in 1913 by an exiled Brest native, Louis Hémon.
The revolution is underway
As the years went by, a certain conservatism prevailed. It wasn't until the 1940s that the beginnings of a veritable cultural revolution emerged, led by Paul-Émile Borduas, a painter who rallied around him the "automatists" from fields as diverse as photography, dance, design and, of course, literature. Their manifesto, Refus global, secretly published on August 9, 1948, rejected immobility and called for radical artistic and social openness. The reception was frosty, and some of the signatories had no choice but to go into exile, but the worm was in the fruit, and in the early 1960s the Quiet Revolution took shape, a period of break with tradition that would prove favorable to the emergence of a more realistic, and all the more assertive, style of writing. Gaston Miron (1928-1996) followed a similar path, renouncing his religious vocation to devote himself to poetry, co-founding L'Hexagone, the first publishing house devoted to the art, in 1953, and later becoming politically active. His remarkable commitment as a publisher, and as a renowned writer, earned him a state funeral. L 'Homme rapaillé, published in 1970, is a major work of Quebec literature.
New writers flourished, and a number of names became established. In 1966, the discreet Réjean Ducharme published L'Avalée des avalés with Gallimard, his manuscript having failed to find a buyer in Quebec. He was nominated for the Goncourt and received the Governor General's Award. That same year, a Quebec woman won the prestigious Prix Médicis. The previous year, Marie-Claire Blais had published Une saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel, a fresco set in a family of 16 children. Although the deviant behavior of some of the characters may have caused offence at the time of publication, this work remains important because it captures the transition between conservative values and progressive ideas. In 1967, Gabrielle Roy was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. An important figure in Franco-Manitoban literature, the author died in 1983 in Quebec City, leaving her public with short stories, poems and tales to discover, or rediscover, such as Bonheur d'occasion, La Montagne secrète and La Rivière sans repos. Finally, it's impossible to talk about Quebec literature without mentioning "national writer" Michel Tremblay. Tremblay entered the world of literature through the theater, with some trepidation considering the scandal caused by Les Belles-Sœurs, first performed in 1968. In 1978, with La Grosse femme d'à côté est enceinte, he began the cycle of Chroniques du Plateau Mont-Royal, and has continued to publish novels that combine tenderness, humor, critical vision and an emphasis on joual, that famous Canadian popular French.
Quebec literature continues to expand, opening up to other cultures with the emergence of "migrant writing", thanks in particular to the brilliant voices of Kim Thuy, Dany Laferrière and Wadji Mouawad. Today, its resonance is international, and successes are multiplying, from Jean-François Beauchemin's Jour des Corneilles, Prix France-Québec 2004, to Éric Plamondon's Taqawan (Quidam), which received the same award in 2018. Quebec publishing houses (La Peuplade, Mémoire d'encrier, Les 400 coups, Le Quartanier, Alire, etc.) are finding their way onto French bookstore shelves, offering strong, innovative texts for discovery, and, faced with such a wealth of language, few French publishers still question the place of birth of the authors who submit manuscripts to them. Our common language, beautiful in its differences, has managed to ignore borders.
