The "Discours preliminaire" opening Francois-Xavier Garneau's Histoire du Canada depuis sa decouverte jusq'a nos jours in 1845 has often been held for a rather didactic discourse regarding the historian's methods. This thesis proposes a new reading of the text according to three different perspectives. We will first retrace, through eleven editions, the editorial history of the "Discours" and, by the same means, of Garneau's Histoire. This reconstitution more particularly reveals the impact of the Histoire on the public at its first publication and the successive readings' influence on the work's form. We will then analyse the ideological content of the "Discours preliminaire" and, lastly, taking into account recent studies on the art of the essay, consider its form. These two last efforts at grasping the specificity of the "Discours" reveal a text not of purely functional value, but one full of doubt and uncertainties which provides a vivid illustration of French Canada's crisis following the Union Act of 1840.

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