Exil, révolte et dissidence: Étude comparée des poésies québécoise et canadienne (1925–1955) by Richard Giguère (review)

HUMANITIES 197 particulier. Insistant surl'obscurite du texte, Brochu suggere que pourlire Une Chaine dans Ie pare, 'il faut I'avoir toujours-deja lu' (p 321). Sa conclusion est que 'Ia fatalite regne d'un bout a I'autre de I'ceuvre romanesque' et que 'Ia solitude est Ie maitre mot de Langevin' (p 350). En insistant trop sur I'insertion de Langevin dans un courant de pensee qu'il definit comme 'existentialiste au sens large' et en pratiquant des decoupages dont la substance n'est presque jamais analysee, Brochu s'eloigne de l'ceuvre de Langevin au point de n'apporter que peu de choses vraiment nouvelles. II revele d'ailleurs tout au long de son essai qu'il s'interesse surtout a se positionner dans 'Ie champ: c'est-a-dire dans Ie milieu. II multiplie eneffet 'Ie jeu des "Herenceslettrees ou mondaines: ce qui n'a 'd'autre fonction que de faire entrer l'ceuvre dans la circulation circulaire de I'interlegitimation' (P. Bourdieu, La Distinction, ed de Minuit 1979, p 55)· Je crois comprendre que c'est parce qu'il aurait souhaite que soit d'abord celebree I'ceuvre de Langevin plutot que !'instance critique, que Basile a concluque cet essaiest'extremementtriste.' (GABRIELLE PASCAL) Richard Giguere. Exil, rtvoite et dissidence: Etude comparee des poesies quebecoise e/ canadienne (1925-1955) Les presses de l'Universite Lava11984. Collection Vie des lettres quebecoises. xvi, 283. $16.00 When in Configuration (1982) E.D. Blodgett denounced the binarism of comparative studies of Canadian literature which had concentrated on the relations between Quebec and Anglo-Canadian literatures and when he argued for the comparative study of the Canadian literatures, advancing a grid paradigm that would include literatures in the many languages written in Canada, he seemingly sounded the death knell of comparative studies within this country. Who in a human lifetime could master the languages necessary to undertake such an enormous project? Those who might have embarked on more limited projects would stand condemned by Blodgett's priorjudgment. Exil, ,,!volteet dissidence escaped this death sentence. As Richard Giguere points out in his preface, the book began its life in the mid-seventies as a thesis. It has been revised and considerably condensed in this version. Its survival is fortunate, since it documents an important and lively period of poetic activity in the two literatures, the period of high modernism. In his introduction, Richard Giguere speculates on future avenues of research for those interested in follow-up comparative studies of the poetry ofthe two literatures. He thus provides a critique ofhis own study, tracing its limits by indicating what he has not done, namely close textual analysis of the corpus of individual writers through semiotic or formalist approaches or a study of the ideology of the poetic corpus and/or of the literary and cultural periodicals of the period. Given the political connotations of 'revolt' which he identifies in this book, the latter should prove to be a very fruitful topic. In that this book provides neither close textual analyses of the poets nor post-structuralist approaches to the poetic and cultural discourse of this period, what, then, does it discuss? Again in his introduction, Giguere offers the reader a history of his book. A thematic study of some twenty-three Montreal poets writing between 1925 and 1955 in English and French, it draws on the work of earlier critics of the modernist period such as Dudek and Gnarowski's The Making of Modern Poetry in Canada, Jones's Butterfly on Rock, Marcotte's Une litterature qui se fait, Blais's De I'ordre et de I'aventure - none of them comparative studies - and more heavily on the comparative periodization established by Smith in The Oxford Book of Canadian Poetry and Moisan in I'Age de ia iitlerature canadienne and Poesie des frontieres. The arguments of all these works are briefly summarized. Moisan's work is particularly important, for Giguere wishes to take issue with his periodizationofthe modem movement. While Giguere accepts Moisan's statement that English-language modernism began with Smith, Scott, Klein, Kennedy, and Pratt in the twenties and thirties, he contends that Moisan's dismissal of all Quebec poetry...