Canadian Literature

Beginning in the 1980s literature in Québec became increasingly cosmopolitan and multiethnic, a literature much like literature elsewhere at last, despite an unresolved push for national sovereignty and separation from Canada. Nationalism no longer preoccupied writers as it had in the 1960s, although it contributed to the popular success of historical novels. These included Arletter Cousture’s Les filles de Caleb (1985; Emilie, 1992) and Francine Ouellette’s Au nom du père et du fils (In the Name of the Father and the Son, 1984).

Feminism also seemed less present as an explicit theme than it was in the late 1970s, but it had been internalized by a new generation of female writers. Among the best of these were Monique Proulx and Elise Turcotte. Proulx satirized the lifestyle and gender wars of modern urban professionals in the hilarious work Le sexe des étoiles (1987; Sex of the Stars, 1996). Turcotte’s Bruit des choses vivantes (1991; The Sound of Living Things, 1993) is a poetic evocation of the world of a single mother and her four-year-old daughter.

Many of the writers who first attracted attention in the 1960s continued to produce important works in the later decades of the 20th century. Godbout’s witty and urbane novels Une histoire américaine (1986; An American Story, 1988) and Le temps des Galarneau (1994; The Golden Galarneaus, 1995) document the shift in attitudes and trends regarding language, politics, and consumer society. The violent eroticism of Hébert’s early work gave way to an increasing serenity and even nostalgia for the society from which she had voluntarily exiled herself in the 1950s. These changes can be seen in her novels Le premier jardin (1988; The First Garden, 1990) and L’enfant chargé de songes (1992; The Burden of Dreams, 1994).

Tremblay, who by the 1980s had published some 50 volumes, also produced several new plays, including Albertine en cinq temps (1984; Albertine in Five Times, 1986), using a cast of characters familiar from his earlier works. His most important works of the 1980s and 1990s were novels, including two additions to the multivolume Chroniques du plateau Mont-Royal: Des nouvelles d’Edouard (News of Edward, 1984) and Le premier quartier de la lune (1989; The First Quarter of the Moon, 1994). Tremblay’s Le coeur découvert (1986; The Heart Laid Bare, 1989) is a moving account of homosexual love. The explicitly autobiographical Un ange cornu avec des ailes de tổle (A Horned Angel with Tin Wings, 1994) traces Tremblay’s evolution from childhood to young adulthood through the books that were important to him.

Feminist writers such as Brossard and France Théoret also produced impressive new works. Brossard’s Le désert mauve (1987; The Mauve Desert, 1990) is a meditation on sexual violence and the threat of atomic destruction, set in the Arizona desert. Théoret also published a collection of autobiographical short stories, L’homme qui peignait Staline (1989; The Man Who Painted Stalin, 1991).

An important development in the literature of Québec in the 1980s and 1990s was the inclusion of writers of ethnic origins other than French, including immigrants or children of immigrants from Italy, Haiti, and China. Marco Micone’s plays Addolorata and Gens du silence spoke powerfully for a working-class Italo-Québecois population whose frustrations and dreams uncannily mirror those of the working-class French-speaking population depicted in the drama of a generation before. They were both produced in 1982 and then translated and published together in 1989 as Two Plays: Voiceless People of Addolorata. Dany Laferrière’s caustic Comment faire l’amour avec une negre sans se fatiguer (1985; How to Make Love to a Negro, 1987) satirizes racial hypocrisies of both English- and French-speaking residents of Québec as seen by a young Haitian immigrant. Ying Chen’s L’ingratitude (1995; Ingratitude, 1998) tells the story of a young Chinese woman who is led to suicide by anger at her mother’s coldness and her father’s destruction by social forces in China.

While the richness and complexity of these works defy any simple categorization, it is clear that French Canadian literature, like the society it grows out of, values a plurality of voices. By their very variety, these voices signal a secular, confident, and increasingly mature outlook on the world.

The portion of this article on Canadian literature in English was written by W.H. New and Kevin McNeilly. The portion on Canadian literature in French was written by Patricia Smart.