From Personalism to Decolonization: Gaston Miron between French Canada and Québec

Abstract

The poetry and life of Gaston Miron continue to influence Quebec literary and popular culture. His transformation from Catholic brother and teacher in training in 1945 to leftist poet and activist in 1965 is emblematic of the changes of Quebec society in this period. What intellectual experiences led Miron to transcend the traditional Catholic culture of Quebec to become a fully realized poet and public intellectual? Whereas his talented predecessors Emile Nelligan and Saint-Denys Garneau failed to overcome the alienation and defensiveness of traditional French-Canadian identity and remain troubling figures, Miron was the first poet to understand, confront, and make art from his minority condition. His consciousness was shaped between 1947 and 1953 by two expressions of French Catholic humanism, Emmanuel Mounier’s personalism and Gabriel Marcel’s Christian existentialism. After 1957, Miron was transformed in large part by his reading of authors and philosophies important to the West’s secular tradition, K...