Les longs romans du XVIIe siècle: Urfé, Desmarets, Gomberville, La Calprenède, Scudéry par Marie-Gabrielle Lallemand

Abstract

Reviews 267 themes, including, for example,“Prolifération des non-lieux”and“Le lieu de mémoire générationnelle.” As these sample headings indicate, time, space, and identity appear as profoundly connected in texts from the many genres under scrutiny, including short stories, novellas, novels, drama, as well as songs and poems. Gabrielle Roy is shown to have opened the door after World War II to a new focus on the city as the Quiet Revolution was beginning to take hold with its sweeping social transformations and shift away from the privileging of rural culture. Taken as a whole, the essays are arranged to highlight a chronological progressive shift away from a struggle to establish a unified Francophone national identity within a pluralistic space, and toward a coming to terms with the increasingly pluralistic society of contemporary Canada, specifically due to increases in immigration. Thus, the essays address and transcend simple English versus French-speaking dichotomies. In fact, many of the Francophone Canadian authors under scrutiny, especially at the end of the collection, are not native to Canada, such as Danny Laferrière (Haiti), Sergio Kokis (Brazil),Ying Chen (China), and Abla Farhoud (Lebanon). In examinations of individual and collective identities, space (urban versus rural) and time (Bakhtin’s chronotope) form a unifying thread throughout this extensive collection. The essays, in addition to the organization offered by Julien, could have been arranged in any number of ways since many are almost companion pieces. For example, in one section, author Régine Robin provides insight into the writing of her novel, La Québécoite. In another section, Annette Hayward offers a close textual analysis of La Québécoite in“Villes et figures de l’entre-deux dans cinq romans québécois migrants.” Within the shift that Julien subtly makes manifest in her chosen grouping of the essays, Montreal (as well as other urban spheres in contemporary Canada) is considered by the contributors to have become a “villerhizome ,”“Babel Moderne,”“palimpsest,” and indeed as “post-national.” Some essays provide close explication de texte type analysis, while others are highly theoretical in nature. For readers new to Quebecois and Acadian French literatures, this vast collection will require much additional research, as general knowledge of the many authors and texts is assumed. On the other hand, this excellent comprehensive collection of erudite and thought-provoking essays is a must for the seasoned scholar of Canadian Francophone literatures. Rider University (NJ) Mary L. Poteau-Tralie Lallemand, Marie-Gabrielle. Les longs romans du XVIIe siècle: Urfé, Desmarets, Gomberville, La Calprenède, Scudéry. Paris: Garnier, 2013. ISBN 978-2-8124-09455 . Pp. 454. 49 a. Critics usually classify the romances included in this study as pastoral, adventure, heroic, or Greek. As Lallemand observes, however, contemporaries grouped them as models of the “long” genre supplanted by the nouvelle after 1670. In this book, she examines the shared techniques of insertion and amplification that account for the works’ great length. The first part deals with structural questions, exploring how writers drew on Heliodorus’s influential Théagènes et Chariclée in order to unify works whose “soul” was variety (29). Lallemand further argues that this narrative structure possesses,like epic,a moral and allegorical significance.The happy end that rewards the virtuous protagonists occurs at the level of the primary narrator, whose omniscience reflects that of providence, whereas the ultimate significance of the intercalated stories may escape their human narrators. The second part examines the encyclopedic pretentions the long romance inherited from epic and history. Aiming to instruct as well as to please, the romancers conceived their works as compendia of diverse types of knowledge.They also strove to create encyclopedias of discourse,perpetuating,through their inclusion of a range of oral and written genres, sixteenth-century notions of the novel as manual of eloquence. Part three, devoted to the genre’s theatrical elements and to poetry, further highlights the importance of direct discourse in the long romance . Recalling the theatrical careers of several of the romances, Lallemand treats La Calprenède’s works as exemplifying a larger tendency to turn key moments of the plot into “scenes” featuring monologue, dialogue, and...