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Generation X has often been defined as being without role models or inspiration. Nevertheless, it is possible to detect a sizeable amount of intertextual references in several Quebecer books written by authors of that generation. In Quebec, these young writer's influences are as distinct as they are diverse, varying from Kerouac to Hemingway and from Sartre to Camus. But concerning their Quebecer role model, one name continually returns, that of Rejean Ducharme. / The goal of this thesis is to illustrate the presence of ducharmesque universe in three Generation X novels, namely Le souffle de l'harmattan by Sylvain Trudel, Vamp by Christian Mistral and La rage by Louis Hamelin. Within these novels, we will attempt to find the trail of three typical elements to Ducharme's work: the rejection of conformity, the contempt towards a consumer society, and the substitution of a utopian universe for reality. / According to Francois Ricard, Ducharme belongs to what he calls the "generation lyrique", which is the eldest baby boomers, while Generation X is composed of Baby Boom's youngest members. Interestingly enough, one should expect such a generational conflict between these two cohorts to incite Generation X writers to despite their predecessor. Hence, this thesis will conclude with a few tentative explanations as to why Generation X authors were so driven to choose Rejean Ducharme, a member of the "generation lyrique", to be their role model.

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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Thèse (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references: (p. 365-380). Also available online.

This study focuses on a rather neglected, although significant, part of Robert Charbonneau's (1911-1967) works: his criticism. Founder, with some friends from college, of la Releve (1934) and les editions de l'Arbre (1940), well-known novelist Charbonneau creates a critical work closely linked to that publishing and intellectual experience. Thus, literature, according to Charbonneau, is an economic phenomenon. But literature also fits in a world where the human is the dominant feature, where it is a preferred way to shed light on the human mystery. Influenced by Maritain and Mounier, admirer of Dostoevski and Mauriac, Charbonneau, with his Catholic viewpoint, conflicts with traditional French-Canadian nationalism because of the opening onto the world and the search for universality he proposes. The novel appears as the human expression's ideal form. Charbonneau finally wishes that French-Canadian literature be alive, human, and universal, and that its American meaning be understood. National is, in his opinion, unessential since a literary work is necessarily produced somewhere and, above all, intended to be literary in the first place.

Cette étude, orientée sur l'idée des deux solitudes sociales que séparent les Franco-américains et les Anglo-américains, vise à une présentation bien plus qu'à une interprétation de la présence anglaise dans le roman canadien-français. [...]

This thesis observes the various representations of the Amerindian in Quebec literature between 1855 and 1875. Those twenty years are set as a sample both sufficiently rich and narrowly delimited as to permit a synchronic analysis. / The analysis itself is a close inspection of a large quantity of poetry and fiction read in search of pan-textual recurrences. Constant features found as such are presented in a quasi-index of characteristics and quasi-characters-like figures, both seen as cliche, or topoi, and both linked to various imaginary constructs about cruelty, fear and security, forestry, religion, womanhood, alcoholism, etc. The poetics constraints in which those figures take place are considered: for example, what role may or may not play an Amerindian character in a narrative? Also analysed are underlying micro-narratives, particularly those linked to progress and decay. / The whole is not a unified system which would account for every possibility; it may instead be conceptualized as series of trends which may or may not combine or clash. / Those cliches are read as signs of larger and collective questionings, most notably about Quebec's self-image.