In this thesis I have attempted to show the differences in themes, attitudes, subjects, and poetic techniques that exist between two succeeding generations of modern French Canadian poets. Alain Grandbois and Anne Hebert (born in 1900 and 1916), respectively) constitute, in my study, the elder generation, while Gatien Lapointe , Fernand Ouellette, and Paul Chamberland (born in 1931, 1930, and 1939, respectively) are the more youthful poets. I have divided my thesis into chapters corresponding to the areas of comparison that were mentioned above and within every chapter I consider, as much as possible, each one of the five poets. I have found that, with regard to "subject," the older poets are especially concerned, in their poetry, with the "je" and its rare pleasures and its more frequent woes while the younger poets move away from this restricted concern with the "self" and its private and difficultly penetrated world towards a. wider involvement in the affairs of all men. Seeing and experiencing reality with the eyes and the sensibilities of all men, of whom they consider themselves to be the brothers, they speak less of "me" and more of "us" and "you." Their subject is no longer the private and highly personal "je" but is instead, the more universal and objective "we" or "them." Attitude evolves between the two generations as well. The classical despair and the defeatism of the elder writers stiffens into optimism and challenge among the more recent poets. The two themes considered, love and nature, are treated in dramatically varied fashion by the two sets of writers. Alain Grandbois and Anne Hebert see nature as antagonistic and menacing and love as either impossible or deceiving while Gatien Lapointe, Fernand Ouellette, and Paul Chamberland glory in the solace and comfort of a peaceful natural order and sing praises of the marvels and the promises of love and the loving and loved woman. Technical practices also change considerably from one generation to the next, ranging from the conservatism of the elder poets to the creative daring of the more recent poets. The poetic works examined in this thesis are Grandbois’ Les lies de la Nuit (1944), Rivages de l'Homme (1948), and L'Etoile Pourpre (1957), all of which are collected together in the compound edition Poèmes of 1963, Les Songes en Equilibre (1942), Le Tombeau des Rois (1953), and Poèmes (1960)* of Anne Hebert, Le Temps Premier (1962) , Ode au Saint-Laurent (1963), and Le Premier Mot (1967) of Gatien Lapointe, Ces Anges de Sang (1955), Séquences de l'Aile (1958), and Le Solell Sous la Mort (1965) of Fernand Ouellette and Paul Chamberland’s Terre Quebec (1964) and L'Afficheur Hurle (1964). I do not study Lapointe's Jour Malaisé (1953) nor his Otages de la Joie (1955) because in them the poet expresses with much less skill the same general ideas that he voices in his later volumes. Genèses (1962) of Paul Chamberland could not be examined because its predominately religious bent keeps it outside of the thematic area that I have restricted myself to. *Poemes contains a re-edition of Le Tombeau des Rois (1953) as well as the most recent collection of Anne Hebert’s poetry, Mystère de la Parole (1960). / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

While English First World War poetry moved from extolling the Victorian versions of chivalric values to the "debunking" realism of some of the soldier poets, Canadian First World War poetry failed to exhibit any such development. Canadian First World War poets write a colonial interpretation of what the English inspirational war poets produced, and they did not express any disillusionment with the military-religious dogma of the war. During the Second World War, some Canadian poets produced poetry of a similar type to that which they wrote celebrating the first. But the war years saw the development of a group of young "modernist" poets who followed up the first modernist movement of the Montreal group and New Provinces, and when these poets wrote about war, the idealization of the conflict was not among their aims. Thus in Canadian war poetry the split between idealization of war and its realistic appraisal does not occur until the Second World War. The realistic appraisal of war on the part of the new poets takes many directions, but their poetry holds in common a refusal to accept any idealized version of the conflict. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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The early Canadian long poem has often been faulted for its lack of aesthetic integrity, being seen in many cases as little more than poorly "versified rhetoric," but it has never been submitted to a thorough rhetorical analysis. An investigation of the rhetorical devices at work in the early Canadian long poem, however, reveals them to be highly strategic operations of both the imperial-colonial project in British North America and the emerging national consciousness of the new nation of Canada. These operations may be understood more clearly through the close examination of periodic "ruptures" in the texts--inconsistencies, contradictions, anomalies, and deflections--which underscore the frequently conflictual nature of the "unsaid" (the real historical, economic and social conditions) and the surface level of the narrative (the aesthetic and generic constraints). Such an analysis reveals the extent to which the problems of allegiance, anxiety and identity were inextricably involved in the colonial and national projects, an involvement which the poetry, despite its intentions, could neither mask nor resolve.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 90-100). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

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The interview focuses on McAlmon's Chinese Opera, a collection which won the Governor General's Award for poetry in 1980. Scobie also discusses other writers in the circle around Gertrude Stein in Paris in the 1920s, and some of Scobie's contempories.

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This essay examines the interstices between geography and history in English Canadian poetry by analyzing the production of space through poetic imagery. It introduces two terms, "garrison temporality" and "geologic temporality," to demonstrate how poets created divisions in the Canadian landscape temporally, demarcating these divisions according to their understanding of the perceived spaces' historicity. In early Canadian poetry, poets tended to distinguish colonized spaces from uncolonized spaces by designating them as either historical or ahistorical. This was achieved, more specifically, by appropriating civil, or garrison, spaces into a narrative of English expansion which traced its historical lineage back to European antiquity. The space outside the garrison's perimeter was deemed to exist out of time, providing yet another justification for further colonization. Later generations of Canadian poets contested the ahistorical designations created by this narrative, as well as the division they draw between urban and non-urban spaces, by appealing to geologic time. Geologic temporality functions not so much as a viable explanatory model for the narration of history as it does a poetic device for contesting the centrality of Europe and of urban centers in assessing contemporary Canada's place in time. This essay traces the shift in attitudes towards time and space from Charles G.D. Roberts' "Tantramar Revisited" (1886) to Dale Zieroth's "Baptism" (1981).

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