"Comment peut un muet prescher l'evangile?" Jesuit Missionaries and the Native Languages of New France

Abstract

In introduction to his analysis of Des Cannibales, Michel de Certeau writes that what Montaigne considers in his essay is precisely status of strange: Who is 'barbarian'? What is 'savage'? In short, what is place of other?' Alterite', that which de Certeau says is the difference which a cultural break puts forward,2 is represented with dazzling variety in travel literature of early modern period; marvels become the visible marks of alterity.3 Many of marks of otherness that had fascinated sixteenth-century travelers are woven, unchanged, into texture of narratives about Americas by seventeenth-century writers. This is certainly case with much of published writing about New France and its people. Yet, in French Jesuit missionaries' descriptions of their struggles to understand and to make themselves understood in indigenous languages of Canada we can find some of most unique and compelling accounts of psychology of encounter ever written.