Mélanges en l'honneur de Luc Lacourcière: Folklore français d'Amérique ed. by Jean-Claude Dupont (review)

4114 LETTERS IN CANADA 1979 cette approche thematique. Un 'parcours' complementaire heureux serait d'offrir une evolution historique plus precise de la chanson quebecoise de 1968 (Charlebois) it aujourd'hui (Ia contre-culture en 1968 et ses differents stades depuis, l'expression it la fois plus amere et plus agressive de I" enracinement: la 'nouvelle musique traditionnelle'). II reste aussi maintenant ainterroger tout Ie texte des chansons des annees 1970. En fait Et cette Amerique chante en quebecois de Bruno Roycomble un vide, mais arrive tard, et laisse des points d'interrogation sur la place de la chanson quebecoise en Amerique depuis 1975. (DENYS LELIEVRE) Jean-Claude Dupont, editor. Melanges en l'honneur de LHe Lacourciere: Folklore fran~ais d'Amerique Lerneac 1978. 485 There are two outstanding men in the history of French-Canadian folkloristics, both from the Beauce, the late Marius Barbeau and the living Luc Lacourciere. Lacourciere was successively professor of French language and literature and director of the Canadian studies department at Universite Laval between 1940 and 1971, but his major work concerned the Archives of Folklore at Laval, which he founded in 1944 and directed until 1975. This institution is the largest of its kind in Canada and ranks among the world's leading folklore archives, all the more important because of the academic attenuation of the subject in metropolitan France since the palmy days of men such as Sebillot and Van Gennep. (Empire-building countries like France and Britain preferred to study 'primitive' cultures rather than their own traditional cultures , which resulted in anthropology but not folkloristics attaining a place in the academic curriculum.) Lacourciere has made betweenfour and five thousand field recordings, directed a century of theses, been invited to innumerable places as visiting speaker and professor, and has amassed a huge list of publications (besides the unpublished Catalogue raisonm! du conte populaire franrais en Amerique du Nord): but these are the outward significations of the life of a man who has clearly inspired both admiration and affection. The dozen hommages which begin the volume lack completely that hint of the perfunctory that sometimes touches comparable eulogies and exemplify the warm esteem in which Lacourciere is widely held. Festschriften, by their nature, tend to a rather random heterogeneity even , on occasion, anarchy - but this one possesses some quite orderly unities while yet encompassing in its 28 contributions a considerable breadth that reflects the wide range of Lacourciere's own interests and activities. Former students and colleagues in francophone Canada make up the majority of contributors, and hence the main unity derives from a concern with French-Canadian tradition, espeCially that of Quebec; HUMANITIES 4ZS5 Acadian culture, however, also shows up prominently in a number of pieces, and the French tradition of Louisiana is represented by an essay from a Laval graduate (Elizabeth Brandon on the Calinda). Two eminent folklorists from outside Canada, Marie-Louise Teneze of Paris and Roger Pinon of Liege, extend the cultural scope further by dealing with topics (animal tales, la danse des sept sauts) from French-speaking Europe. From the anglophone university centre for folklore studies in Canada, Memorial University, come Gerald Thomas's account of folk-narrative research in French-speaking Newfoundland and Herbert and Violetta Halpert's study of one concept - an individual rejected by both heaven and hell as it occurs across the genres of the English-language heritage. Traditional genres such as song, dance, language, belief, custom, and material culture all receive consideration, and narrative particularly so, in such articles as Catherine Jolicoeur's 'Une recherche legendaire: Conrad Laforte's 'La Grand' Gueule, Gargantua quebecois: and Nancy Schmitz's 'Elements gaeliques dans Ie conte populaire canadienfran ,ais. ' Among the more general topics appear the relations to folklore of religious history and geography; the interrelations of ethnography, ethnology, and anthropology; and Paul Carpentier's lively survey of the schools of thought in Quebec folkloristics. Benoit Lacroix supplies a scholarly and informative account of oral tradition and medieval theologians which would, however, have benefited from an awareness of recent work on oral composition. Robert Bouthillier and Louis-Edmond Hamelin both follow fruitfully a major emphasis in contemporary folkloristics in setting their texts, song and memorat respectively, firmly...