This dissertation examines the fiction of contemporary Acadian writer France Daigle and proposes a new critical approach to her latest novel, Pour sûr, which was published in 2011. Pour sûr is a 747 page polyphonic, hypertext novel written in fragments that are organized into 144 categories of 12 fragments each. The novel is notable for its metafictional, encyclopedic qualities but also for its skillful and expansive use of Chiac, the most recent iteration of Acadian French that is spoken in the Moncton/Dieppe region of New Brunswick, Canada. Chapter 1 follows the trajectory of Daigle’s relationship to this language over the span of her thirty-year writing career. My analysis shows how her continued ambivalence toward Chiac is a source of a major transformation that occurs in Pour sûr, in which Chiac becomes a legible mode of representation that makes Daigle’s creative goals possible. In chapter 2, the unusual and creative form and structure of Daigle’s novels are analyzed, along with the evolution of several aspects of her work, including metafictional, structural, and thematic elements that are present in multiple texts. I identify the innovations that make Pour sûr so different from the earlier novels and propose a closer analysis of its game-like qualities in particular. Pour sûr engages its readers and critics by requiring a high level of participation, which transforms their approach to the text. Thus, in chapter 3, I explore the ways in which this novel can be conceived of as a kind of game, and the ways in which these game-playing aspects of the text motivate readers to continue reading and re-reading it, with different experiences and interpretations each time. Here a lusory critical approach is proposed, which is informed by both reader-response criticism and more recent work in the field of game studies. Finally, I argue that Daigle, by creating a kind of hyperreality (as conceived by theorists like Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco), ultimately aims to shape the horizon of expectations of her reading public.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/34406 |
| Date | 05 February 2019 |
| Creators | Roy, Monique A. |
| Contributors | Cazenave, Odile, Row, Jennifer |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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