La Vie littéraire au Québec. Vol 2: le projet national des Canadiens, 1806–1839 by Maurice Lemire (review)

HUMANITIES 233 deur de la Legion d'honneur et inspecteur general honoraire. Bref, ce n'etait pas n'importe qui, ce Charles ab der Halden qui s'etait pris d'amour, un jour, pour la litterature canadienne-fran<;aise. Je VOllS invite aprendre connaissance vous-meme du portrait tout en touches delicates que nous en offre Marie-Andree Beaudet, aqui il faut savoir gre d'avoir enfin rendu a Charles ab der Halden la place qui lui revient dans l'histoire de la litterature du Quebec. (ANNEITE HAYWARD) Maurice Lemire et a1. La. Vie litteraire au Quebec. Vol 2: Ie projet ,wtional des Canadiens, 1806-1839 Presses de l'Universite Laval. xix, 587 including chronology, bibliography, and index Maurice Lemire and this research team continue their reconstitution of literary activity in Quebec from the earliest times (see the review in UTQ 62:1), with the second volulne reaching the threshold of what was to emerge as a national literature. The volume goes from the foundation of Le Canadien to the surviving letters of the condemned Patriotes. The literary products under review are still dominated by political journalism and the chosen time frame subtends an historical thesis. According to this, the leading spirits associated with Le Cariadien and other periodicals mastered the art of political discourse and Canada's first constitution; they identified and all but quelled the early movement to replace this constitution with a Union, but were then driven to a rebellion. Through this experience they began to find a new voice. It is a familiar view, but filled out with a wealth of detail about writing and publishing. Concurrent with the influence of local political developments, the influence of international Romanticism made its slow but effective appearance. The new voice of the Canadiens is found, at the end of this phase, through the new subjectivity learned from this literary movement. The heroes, in this perspective, are the young poet FranGois-Xavier Garneau (not yet historian ), the condemned Patriote Chevalier de Lorimier and, to a lesser extent, Philippe-Ignace Aubert de Gaspe. The lesser stars who led readership towards Romantic sensibility are those who published large quantities of short fiction, including some two hundred original pieces. Many of these applied Canadian local colour to gothic and sentimental adventures adapted from English, French, or American models, the most striking being the legend of the 'Iroquoise,' which Lemire has analysed elsewhere. Aubert's novel L'influence d'Ul1 livre (1837) marks an important step forward not merely by being (arguably) Canada's first novel, but by rejecting the classical idyllic portrait of rural life and attempting to reach into the imagination of unusual rural types. Lemire reminds us that its 234 LETTERS IN CANADA 1992 influence was muffled because it carne to be known mainly through a bowdlerized edition. Garneau's poetry does indeed make an astonishing leap from the stilted neo-classicism of Michel Bibaud. Small samplings of it have long been known because they have been included in editions of his Histoire after 1845. To know how literature was developing we should know more of it; on the other hand, as Lemire shows in a later chapter, its early impact was not what we might expect. Lorimier's letters on the eve of execution, though without the effusions of the High Romantic poets, show the serious self-searching and noble dedication to. a public ideal which characterize a main stream in Romanticism. They also show a fine command of epistolary style, even though they were not intended for publication, and they are a valid landmark in the progress of subjective writing. These authors bear witness to the progress of writing, but had little irnmed~ate impact. So they occupy only a small part of a volume taken up by conditions of production, major influences, and essential institutions such as the press. Many other writers, of whom few are generally known to literary historians, are described in terms of genre, theme, and style. So we learn of a flourishing theatre life, even if very few original plays survive. Travel writing is an important touchstone; with real continuity from earlier writers like La Verendrye, it took on new forms, showing, by 1836, a distinct Romantic sensibility under the pen of J.-B.-A. Ferland (not published, however, until 1861). Well-known figures like Papineau appear as a bridge into personal writing from the prose developed in the public discourse of the earlier period. Lemire brings a mass of such rnaterial to show that 'la poetisation d'un pays' is not a spontaneous happening. In Lower Canada, the writing-reading institution developed late enough for its genesis to be traced by modem methods of documentation. The Centre de recherche en litterature quehecoise convincingly shows the value of such methods, creating a new perspective for the writers mentioned in this review, but also for the movement of which they were precursors, appearing in volume 3. (JACK WARWICK) CJ.G. Turner. A Karelli,m Companion Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 220. $38.50 paper This is the kind of book that is useful because of its modesty. The author has no axe to grind. He does not state a thesis and then try to prove it. Instead he gathers together information that a non-Russian-speaking reader of Anna Karenina might find helpful to extend his or her understanding of the text. This is Professor Turner's objective - 'to make the novel more readily accessible to English speakers who encounter it and ...