Quebec’s early novels are full of sacred themes and motifs – devotional objects and practices, parables and scripture, priests and nuns, transcendence, divinity, and eternity. Yet the critical gaze of the past fifty years has seldom engaged the idea of the sacred in a sustained way. Indeed the presence of the sacred has alienated modern and postmodern readers who ignore or downplay its significance, leading to misguided assessments of these works as mediocre and even unreadable for contemporary audiences. The Sense of the Sacred in the Early Novels of Quebec reexamines seven classic novels at the foundations of Quebec’s national literature: Patrice Lacombe’s La Terre paternelle (1846), P.-J.-O. Chauveau’s Charles Guérin (1853), Antoine Gérin-Lajoie’s Jean Rivard (1874), Philippe Aubert de Gaspé’s Les Anciens Canadiens (1863), Laure Conan’s Angéline de Montbrun (1884), Louis Hémon’s Maria Chapdelaine (1916), and Félix-Antoine Savard’s Menaud, maître-draveur (1937). Through chapters that focus on sacred themes, character analysis, narrative temporalities, and the hermeneutics of the sacred, Lisa Gasbarrone demonstrates that these novels are more nuanced and innovative than their reputation has allowed. *The Sense of the Sacred in the Early Novels of Quebec *reintroduces readers to classic works of French-Canadian literature that ironically and provocatively cast their quarrel with modernity in that essentially modern form: the novel.

In the 1970s, Hydro-Qu?bec declared “We Are Hydro-Qu?b?cois.” The slogan symbolized the intimate ties that had emerged between hydroelectric development in the North and French Canadian aspirations in the South. Caroline Desbiens focuses on the first phase of the James Bay hydroelectric project to explore how this culture of hydroelectricity hastened the erasure of Aboriginal homelands and the manipulation of Northern Quebec’s material landscape. She concludes that truly sustainable resource development will depend on all actors bringing an awareness of their cultural histories and visions of nature, North, and nation to the negotiating table.

He illustrates how citizens of French-Catholic origins living in Canada have constructed their identity by defining the self both as part of a closed community founded in race, language, and religion, and as radically opposed to the other, an omnipresent heterogeneous threat to the homogeneous group."--BOOK JACKET.

The canon of French literature has been the subject of much debate and now increasingly francophone literatures are demanding more attention in student French literature courses. The first study in English of francophone literatures, this book introduces the diverse bodies of texts in French from the numerous French-speaking areas around the world, with separate sections covering Africa, French Canada, the Creole Islands, and Europe, and will provide students at both undergraduate and 'A' level with a comprehensive introductory survey of the subject. Francophone literatures emerge from rich bi- and multi-lingual cultures in part as colonial legacies. They also challenge the monopoly of the French literary tradition. This introductory survey celebrates the linguistic difference of such texts and the creative possibilities offered by deviance from an established tradition, demanding new critical approaches. The texts studied here cast a new light upon French literature in terms of their diverse perspectives upon writing, history, politics, and culture, their violent rewritings, subversive versions and parodies sometimes forming an elaborate pastiche of celebrated Frence texts. Guides to further reading, a select bibliography, and an extensive index combine to make the book an extremely readable introductory overview of a hitherto little explored area.

This unique study explores how Quebec's landscapes have been represented in both literature and visual art throughout the centuries, from the writing of early explorers such as Cartier and Champlain to work by prominent contemporary authors and artists from the province. William J. Berg traces recurrent images and themes within these creations through the most significant periods in the development of a Quebecois identity that was threatened initially by the wilderness and indigenous populations, and later by the dominance of British and American influences. Focusing on the interplay between nature and culture in landscape representation, Literature and Painting in Quebec contends that both have reflected and fashioned the meaning of French-Canadian nationhood. As such, Literature and Painting in Quebec presents a new perspective to approach the notion of national identity, a quest that few groups have engaged in more persistently than the Quebecois.

Now available in a single volume paperback, this advanced reference resource for the novel and novel theory offers authoritative accounts of the history, terminology, and genre of the novel, in over 140 articles of 500-7,000 words. Entries explore the history and tradition of the novel in different areas of the world; formal elements of the novel (story, plot, character, narrator); technical aspects of the genre (such as realism, narrative structure and style); subgenres, including the bildungsroman and the graphic novel; theoretical problems, such as definitions of the novel; book history; and the novel's relationship to other arts and disciplines. The Encyclopedia is arranged in A-Z format and features entries from an international cast of over 140 scholars, overseen by an advisory board of 37 leading specialists in the field, making this the most authoritative reference resource available on the novel. This essential reference, now available in an easy-to-use, fully indexed single volume paperback, will be a vital addition to the libraries of literature students and scholars everywhere.