Gynocritics/La Gynocritique: Feminist Approaches to Writing by Canadian and Québécoise Women; Approches féministes à l’ècriture des Canadiennes et Québécoises ed. by Barbara Godard (review)

144 LETTERS IN CANADA 1988 savagely. And Davies is one of a long line, as a file of the Canadian Forum, that Metcalf also scorns, would clearly demonstrate. Can one imagine a Metcalf metamorphosis similar to that of Robertson Davies? (WALTER E. SWAYZE) Barbara Godard, editor. GynocriticslLa Gynocritique: Feminist Approaches to Writing by Canadian and Quebecoise Women; Approches feministes al'ecriture des Canadiennes et Quebecoises ECW Press 1987.400. $25.00; $15.00 paper At last, the long-awaited proceedings of the 1981 Dialogue conference at York University have appeared - and they were worth the wait. But the value of the volume goes well beyond documenting one event: this is an important addition to feminist literary scholarship, and its eclectic and multidisciplinary nature acts as a valuable testimony to the wide range of critical and theoretical possibilities open to feminist readers and writers in Canada and elsewhere (several contributors are American). The papers are presented in either English or French, with the exception of the introduction and other paratextual sections written by Barbara Godard, for these appear in both languages. This decision, both here and at the conference, is a political one. As Godard states: 'Our speaking together in two languages, French and English, questions the male tradition of hierarchical difference in which categories create exclusions, forcing either/or choices.' Inevitably, perhaps, the issues raised by the papers in this volume are political issues, even if they may not always be recognized as such by those working within dominant patriarchal modes: issues such as subjectivity, representation, genre boundaries (fiction/theory/history/ biography/autobiography); creativity; the position ofthe critic. Others are more obviously political to everyone: marginality, power, hierarchies of discourse, and, of course, gender. What is called the 'shaping power' of ideology in institutions, but also in language and in the constitution ofthe self, is a recurrent concern in these papers, though the perspective differs depending on the context, English-Canadian or Quebecois. It is present in those studies called literary-archaeological where writers such as Malr Verthuy, Susan Jackel, Gwen Davies, and Gabrielle Fremont rediscover and grant value to the lost or marginalized voices of women, both of the past and of the present. This ideological self-consciousness informs the more general or theoretical papers. of Madeleine Ouellette-Michalska, Donna Smyth, Lorraine Weir, Nicole Brossard, and Barbara Godard as well. It cannot be separated from the investigations of mythic patterns or socio-literary stereotyping in the work of Rota Lister, Annis Pratt, Gloria Orenstein, Marie Couillard, and Francine Dumouchel. It even constitutes the ground for the technical analysis and theoretical study oflanguage (by HUMANITIES 145 Daphne Marlatt, Barbara Godard, Christl Verduyn) and ofironic versions of intertextuality - parody, pastiche, allusion, quotation - by Evelyne Voldeng, Suzanne Lamy, Louise Forsyth, Lorraine Weir, and Nicole Brossard. Otherrecurring issues include the concern for the audience ofwomen's writing and the institutional structures and strictures within which women must read and write. Many ofthe papers do institutional analyses of both Canadian and Quebec contexts to see how women have been marginalized by the critical tradition (even the most seemingly radical Freudian , Marxist, structuralist), by the academy (its canons and its power structures), the market, the literary traditions themselves. Many papers also argue for a different discourse for women writers - as critics and as writers. Though they rarely agree on exactly what that discourse would look or sound like, there are two common denominators: it should take on a form that would challenge and transform the dominant patriarchal norms and it should allow a personal, self-conscious (and thus politicized) voice to be heard. The papers are more or less balanced between those written about Quebecois and English-Canadian literature ortheory, though the amount of detailed commentary on particular writers differs greatly. Only Jay Macpherson, Erika Ritter, and to a much lesser extent, Margaret Atwood, Gwendolyn MacEwen, and Margaret Laurence are discussed, whereas many Quebecois writers receive more specific treatment: Madeleine Gagnon, Yolande Villemaire, France Theoret, Genevieve Amyot, Denise Boucher, Christiane Rochefort, Suzanne Paradis, Michele Mailhot, Jovette Marchessault, Carole Masse, Louis Dupre, and most frequently, Nicole Brossard, Louky Bersianik, Marie-Claire Blais, and Anne Hebert. Barbara Godard's impressive bibliography (130 pages) is extensive and extremely...