This thesis will examine the relationship between art, nationalism and identity as it appears in the context of the 1967 Montreal Universal Exposition. "Expo 67" saw a confrontation between Canadian and Quebecois expressions of nationalism, and we will concentrate on this aspect as it appears through the artistic representations in the different national pavilions. / We will also look into the artworks presented by young Quebecois artists in the more marginal "Youth Pavilion" situated on Ile Sainte-Helene, and will explain how this new generation of artists was able to take advantage of the particular context of the Universal Exhibition in order to implement its own concept of national identity, an identity closely related to popular culture, and thus very different from the image projected by the Quebecois elite of the time.

The "end of the century" nourishes a questioning movement on national identity and on the concept of modernity that is encouraged by the Quebec essayists. We propose an organization of the elements of the sovereign narrative which would be able to conduct and constitute a generative grammar of its argumentation. Our project consists in creating a matrix of the nationalistic discourse during the 1995 Quebec referendum period on sovereignty. This schematic figure will bring to its most simple expression the narrative of the Quebec nationalistic discourse selecting examples from ten texts of our primary bibliography. Our matrix will incorporate ideas, dogmas, theories, facts and myths stemming from the ideological discourses. We will see how these elements do interact, to be able afterwards to gather them in a framework on which national identity and legitimity of the national accession to sovereignty should be based. The study of this narrative of the past, as well as the analysis of the public characters will be leaded by the sociocritical approach of discourse analysis. / The francophone cultural nation living on the territory of the Province of Quebec demonstrates itself through the values of tenacity, solidarity, labour and openness of mind towards "Others". The nation increases the standing of a society project based on a democratic basis, condemning the traitors of the Quebec nation. This history concerns the francophone majority even though it is linked to the other "oppressed peoples" of the World History. This "french-quebecer" history is enhanced with a collective memory, projected towards the future in making the project of sovereignty the purpose of its teleological progression.

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Can the political eloquence of Louis-Joseph Papineau, one of the great Canadian orators of the nineteenth century, be revived? There are still no significant studies on the logic of argumentation or on the image of a certain representation of the political crisis set by the orations of the Honorable Speaker of the House of Assembly of Lower-Canada. The following thesis focuses on Louis-Joseph Papineau's political discourses of 1830-1837. By the analysis of the representations and the reasonings, of the argumentation, of the rhetorical functions fulfilled by the discourses and also by the analysis of the social vectors at work in these, this document establishes landmarks and proposes a topographical outlook of Papineau's political rhetoric. It seek;s to show the topic organisation and functioning of this rhetoric, in a nineteenth century setting of oratorical and political culture.

The official language policies and their basic concepts, the principle of personality in Canada and the principle of territoriality in Switzerland, are critically analyzed. The two democratic federations are compared as two multination states since 'nation' is defined in cultural terms. Language survival is justified in liberal theory through minority rights. The principle of territoriality that assures the dominance of the linguistic majority over a territory within the federation is in accordance with liberal democracy if fundamental rights are protected. The principle of territoriality contributes thus to political stability within a multination federation. There is no movement in Switzerland that is fed by a language-based grievance despite the existence of three linguistic minorities: Switzerland accommodates successfully linguistic diversity. In Canada, the perception that the survival of the French language might not be sustained fuels a secessionist movement threatening the unity of the federation.

Between 1840 and the end of the 1850s, the French-Canadian elite dominating the political landscape was calling for "reformism". Besides belonging to the same generation, the members of this elite shared several features: they had accepted the Union, campaigned for responsible government and opposed annexation to the United States. This thesis aims to put forward some of the main ideas of this elite, and thereby of the reformist period. In the historiography of Canada and Quebec, the reformists are generally portrayed as founders, be it of a nation, a political regime or a bourgeois social order. To avoid teleological pitfalls, this thesis attempts to bring back, in context, the flavour of the thought of a particular time. / Reformist thinking was reconstituted from three kinds of sources: the reconstruction of debates in the legislative assembly, the French-Canadian "ministerial press" of the mid-nineteenth century, and the many reformist writings left by the figures under study, including government reports, personal diaries, public discussions and two novels. Attentive study of these sources reveals five main axes of thought, revolving around the time, politics, the economy, the social fabric and religious concerns. A chapter is devoted to each of these themes. / I argue that reformist thought has its own consistency, that is to say that it is distinct from the reactionary ultramontanism of Mgr Bourget and from the doctrinaire liberalism of "les rouges" and the "Institut canadien". It seeks to show that the reformists believed in the virtues of progress, of responsible government and of the free market, but that at the same time they were anxious about the future of their nationality. Their constant concern for the unity of their nationality and their will to establish, with the clergy, a more rigorous morality, able to "make people better", bears witness to this uneasiness about the future and a concern for preservation which typifies the conservative.

This thesis examines the reaction of organized labour to Quebec separatist nationalism for the period between 1960, the year of the creation of the Rassemblement pour l'independance nationale and the beginning of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, and 1980, the year of the first referendum on Quebec's constitutional status. The thesis investigates four labour organizations: the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), the Federation des travailleurs et travailleuses du Quebec (FTQ), the Confederation des syndicats nationaux (CSN), and the Centrale de l'enseignement du Quebec (CEQ). It shows in which ways the positions of the four centrals have been informed by their members' national identifications and the emotional and cognitive mechanisms that resulted from these identifications.

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For much of the last twenty years, political leaders and academics have assumed that the survival of Canada depends on constitutional reform, and never more so than in the wake of the 1995 Quebec referendum. This thesis updates the literature by explaining the remarkable story of the last several years: the achievement of a national unity peace in the absence of constitutional reform. The explanation centres on the post-referendum shift in federal strategy from constitutional reform to Plan B, a strategy based on the rules of secession that has its origins, it is argued, in the Reform Party's response to Mulroneyera constitutional reform. The thesis concludes that Plan B was a successful national unity strategy because it made secession seem risky and undesirable, but also because the strategy - unlike constitutional reform - was based on widespread national support and on the viability of the constitutional status quo.

According to Francois Ricard in La generation lyrique: essai sur la vie at l'oeuvre des premiers-nes du baby-boom , the group born in Quebec during the decade immediately following the Second World War is primarily characterized by "[...] un amour eperdu de soi-meme, une confiance categorique en ses propres desirs et ses propres actions, et le sentiment d'un pouvoir illimite sur le monde [...]" (p. 8). / The objective of the present research was to determine more precisely whether the first novel of writers of the lyric generation reflected the spirit particular to that generation, in what way and to what extent. In other words, the present work consisted of either confirming or invalidating Ricard's hypothesis by analysing it in the light of the literary works themselves. / Twenty-three novels were chosen according to the year of their publication (1967--1975) and the age of the authors at the time of publication (between 21 and 31 years). / An analysis of the works clearly confirmed Ricard's intuition: egocentricity and introspection, revolution and reinvention of literary style and narcissism were consistently present in the novels studied. These characteristics stem from a clear dominance of the autodiegetic narration style, the control of elements of time and space by the narrator, who is often personally identifiable with the author and finally from an upheaval of scriptural standards. The thematic of the style of writing as an outlet, a pleasure or an experimentation is ever present. The narrators themselves dominate the stage and their narcissistic personalities are evident throughout.