En quête du roman gothique québécois 1837–1860. Tradition littéraire et imagination romanesque by Michel Lord, and: La logique de l'impossible. Aspects du discours fantastique québécois by Michel Lord (review)

HUMANITIES 245 popular novel of the North American frontier, and to the late novel Westbrook as an exemplary text in the literary representation of southwestern Ontario, Duffy insists on the.importance of stressing folklore over fiction, history over romance. . A World under Sentence is Dennis Duffy's third monograph considering Richardson's work, its predecessors both having been written within the constraints of the ECW Press series, Canadian Writers and Their Works and Canadian Fiction Studies. Although the title ofthe latter volume, A Tale ofSad Reality. John Richardson's 'Wacousta' hints at his interest in coming to terms with Richardson's claims for the realism of his fiction, A World under Sentence offers Duffy the opportunity to return to research findings underlying, but not developed in, his earlier studies, and the chance to pursue particular points of interest within a loose structure of his own devising. Surviving as a legacy of the introductory predecessors is a twopage precis of Wacousta in the notes of A World under Sentence, a superfluous inclusion in a study that can only be of interest to serious students of Richardson's career and fiction. Duffy's historicizing is not pursued through any rigorous adherence to materialist theory, nor does he break new ground in theories of canon formation as he attempts to place Richardson's novels in the context ofAmerican fiction oftheir time. Instead, the book's primary interest stems from its usefulness as a supplement to the seminal studies of David Beasley, Michael Hurley, and Douglas Cronk. Duffy's successors in literary historiography will also undoubtedly see in his exploration of the complexity of historical contexts for Richardson's fiction not only a fleshing out of Klinck's sense of history and fiction meldingin spiritual autobiography but also yet another attempt to reinforce a dominant Canadian canon of fictional realism in this recuperation of Richardson's 'sad reality.' (LESLIE G. MONKMAN) Michel Lord. En qllete du roman gothique quebecois 1837-1860. Tradition litteraire et imagination romanesque Nuit Blanche editeur 1994. 182. $21.95 Michel Lord. La logique de !'impossible. Aspects du discours jantastique quebicois Nuit Blanche editeur 1995· 364. $23.95 These works from the pen of Michel Lord, well known as a columnist ~nd critic writing about fantastic literature and the short story in Quebec, explore two distinct periods of Quebec literary history. En quete du roman gothique quebecois is a revised version of the thesis Lord originally published under the same title in 1985. Lord studies seven novels, the entirety of those written in Quebec between 1837 and 1860 246 LEITERS IN CANADA 1996 which display, he argues, some affinity with the Gothic mythos. These include Aubert de Gaspe's L'Influence d'un livre (1837) and, at the study's other chronological boundary, Eraste d'Orsonnens's Une apparition (1860). But Lord first provides a brief introduction to Gothic literature, emphasizing thematic and plot elements conunon to such English works as Horace Walpole's The Castle ofOtranto and Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. Lord evokes the Gothic novel's atmosphere of terror, with ruins, storms, and cadavers to the fore, and its typical narrative, in which, he claims, love, temporarily stymied by terror, ultimately triumphs. Set against this European model, Lord conducts an archetypal analysis ofhis own corpus, relying heavily on the work of Gilbert Durand, who was . in his turn mfluenced byJung. The three characters Lord finds at the centre of the Gothic novel are, logically enough, the hero, the villain, and the victim. Lordidentifies two categories ofheroes, the 'solar'figure who fights against the forces of darkness, and the more 'banal' hero who belongs to the realm of comedy or even parody. 'The villain seems to be the character Lord finds most compelling. Indeed, although the vast majority of the revisions found in this second edition are stylistic in nature, avoiding what one might term 'thesis-speak,' one of the more substantial changes is the division of Lord's study of the villain into two separate chapters. Th~ first deals with the villainwho is evil incarnate, .a figure Lord calls the Dragon. The backdrop against which the Dragon exists comes in for extensive study: according to Lord...