20 - French-Canadian Novels from the Nineteenth into the Twentieth Century

Summary

This chapter traces the roots and development of the French-Canadian novel from the nineteenth into the twentieth century. A contested form in Europe, where commentators questioned its cultural value and usefulness to society, the novel’s status was additionally fraught in French Canada. Here, it was perceived as a product of the ‘Old World,’ shaped to meet the needs and to reflect the values of foreign readers. Throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century, the French-Canadian novel remained a vehicle for variously negotiating or consolidating the emergent national character. Following the foundational development of ‘belles lettres’ in the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the first novels appeared in Quebec in the 1830s and 1840s. While displaying obvious debts to metropolitan influences, these inaugural novels also set precedents in theme, setting, and characterization. In addition to meeting the challenges of writing representative fictions, French-Canadian novelists had also to negotiate pressures exerted by the censorial clerical elite. The clash between social liberals and conservatives dominated literary production at the turn of the twentieth century. The themes and forms of French-Canadian fiction bear witness to the unique historical and sociocultural circumstances under which the novel developed here.