Thesis (M.A.). / Written for the Dept. of Integrated Studies in Education. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/07/24). Includes bibliographical references.

During the seventies, a new discourse on language emerged and built up in Quebec. While the "querelle du joual" was almost finished, feminists became more and more aware of their so-called "mother tongue"'s inherent sexism. Believing in determinist linguistic theories, the vast majority of them came to the conclusion that language was a symbolic system that rejected women and women's experience. / While some American feminists were proposing an important reform of the language, in Quebec, a few women writers incorporated their preoccupations with language in their literary texts. These women dedicated themselves to intensive textual researches, with the intention of creating a new "women's language" that would override the patriarchal law ruling the symbolic order. The different works studied in this thesis have been chosen between those of the women most representative of feminist metalinguistic discourse in Quebec: L'Euguelionne (1976), by Louky Bersianik, L'Amer ou le chapitre effrite (1977), by Nicole Brossard, Une voix pour Odile (1978) by France Theoret and Lueur: roman archeologique (1979) by Madeleine Gagnon. / The analysis of these texts will particularly be focused on the tensions building between discursive and formal aspects of each work. We'll see if and how the metalinguistic discourse, which we can find in the texts themselves and in more theoretic articles, is manifesting itself by a radical manipulation of the language at a formal level. The variety of ways some women writers of Quebec tried to inscribe feminine experience in language can be shown as a proof of the extreme difficulty of these textual practices, which elaborate themselves through what they are desperately trying to overcome.

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