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Louis Hémon’s Intertextual Use of Pêcheur d’Islande in Maria Chapdelaine: Making a Novel Set in Canada Speak about Problems in Pre-World War One France
- Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'études canadiennes
- University of Toronto Press
- Volume 48, Number/numéro 3, Fall/automne 2014
- pp. 133-161
- Article
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This essay demonstrates that, in developing the plot outline and male protagonist of his last novel, Maria Chapdelaine (1914), Louis Hémon repeatedly evoked Pierre Loti’s then-popular narrative about Breton fishermen and their community, Pêcheur d’Islande (1886). A Breton himself, Hémon seems to have evoked Loti’s male protagonist, Yann Gaos, repeatedly in presenting his own, François Paradis, because such intertextualization allowed him to deal in a new way with the question of a perceived decline of masculinity, an issue that he had treated in several of his previous narratives and that was occupying Western European thought at the time. Such intertextualization also allowed him to address an issue that had been of personal significance to him since his adolescence: the importance of finding a way to be free of the constraints that he believed modern society was trying to impose on men.
Le présent essai montre comment Louis Hémon, au moment d’élaborer l’intrigue et le protagoniste masculin de son dernier roman, Maria Chapdelaine (1914), a évoqué à plusieurs reprises le populaire roman Pêcheur d’Islande (1886) qui racontait la vie de pêcheurs bretons et de leur communauté. Breton lui-même, Hémon semble avoir fait souvent allusion au Yann Gaos de Loti quand il a créé son François Paradis parce que cette intertexualisation lui permettait d’aborder différemment la question du déclin de la masculinité, la dégénération, qu’il avait traitée dans des textes antérieurs et qui continuait à préoccuper l’Europe occidentale de l’époque. Cette intertextualisation du roman lotien lui permettait aussi de parler d’un sujet qui le préoccupait depuis sa propre adolescence : l’importance de se libérer des contraintes que, selon lui, la société moderne imposait aux hommes.
