Québécois Literature and American Literature

Abstract

Since its settlement in New France, the French-speaking population of Canada has maintained a close but ambiguous relationship with other, English-speaking population groups on the American continent. These relations have been characterized not only by feelings of intense attraction, especially among the working class and lower classes of society, but also by a certain distrust that may be gleaned in the discourse of the elite, as the work of historians Gérard Bouchard (2000), Yvan Lamonde (2001), and Paul-André Linteau (2000) show. Their studies reveal the similarities between Québécois and other New World communities on the continent, as well as the numerous links that connect the Québécois and American cultures. In the same way, the close resemblance between the Québécois literary imagination and its American counterpart has been explored in research on the myth of America (Morency 1994) and on the “intérieurs du Nouveau Monde” (interiors of the New World). ¹ Despite the clear profile we have of these tendencies, there remains, however, a lack of detailed analysis of the ways in which Québécois writers have become aware of and in some cases familiar with American literature and have drawn inspiration from it.