La Fille de Christophe Colomb (Paris: Gallirnard, 1969) is a novel written by
Rejean Ducharme in rhyming verse resembling an epic poem In this thesis, it will be
shown that the form of the novel serves to emphasize the contestation of History evident
in the novel's content. While this novel is certainly unusual in Ducharme's work it fits into
the ambiant literary discourse of Quebec in the 1960's, where the theories of
decolonisation influenced writers and critics alike. In particular, History was seen to be
imposed on Quebec from the outside; Quebec must necessarily reject this History and
begin to make its own. This underlying assumption for the analysis proposed in this thesis
will be demonstrated in Chapter One through reflections by Ducharme's contemporaries,
existing criticism of La Fille de' Christophe Colomb, and by current theories of
postcolonial writing. In Chapter Two, the epic form of the novel will be studied in detail.
On the surface, the author appears to respect the "rules" of the genre, but a close reading
of the text will show that this respect is only superficial, and that the rules are subverted to
create tension between literary norms and Ducharme's writing. It is the narrative structure
of the novel, however, that proves to be the most subversive deviation from the norms of
the epic poem: although the majority of the novel is narrated in the third person, a
substantial fragmentation of the narrative voice occurs which will be demonstrated in
Chapter Three. The net impact of this fragmentation is to produce a conflict between the
codes of the epic poem and the novel. At the end of the analysis of the relationship
between literary form and contestation of History in La Fille de Christophe Colomb, it
will be shown that the form, as an element separate from the content, conveys a
problematic relationship between this text and History. The novel contributes to the
contestation of History as practised in the literature of Quebec in the 1960's by subverting
the literary code, thereby linking literary history to History as colonizing factors that are
questioned in this novel.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/3699 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Hobbs, Sandra Claire |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | French |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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