Tag Archives: La Patrie littéraire

Language Laws in Quebec: la Patrie littéraire, the Literary Homeland

02 Sunday Oct 2022

Posted by in Official Languages (Canada), Quebec, Quebec Art, Quebec literature

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Marc-Aurèle de Foy Susor-Coté, Coin de mon village, Arthabaska, 1914 (Musée des Beaux-Arts du Canada. NGA)

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I made changes to my last post. There were little mistakes, “surface errors.” I’m ageing. However, I would like to add that, in my opinion, Canadians have not paid sufficient attention to the findings of the Royal Commission of Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1963-1969) and Canada’s Official Languages Act. It was passed in 1969 and amended in 1988. The effort provided by Canadian Parents for French has led to the creation of French immersion schools. Canadian Parents for French is an organization that needs members and support.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms may be the better tool for promoting bilingual education. It guarantees minority rights when numbers warrant. I suspect that l’École acadienne de Pomquet owes its existence to Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In this respect, I would like to repeat that, in Quebec, learning French as a second language should be in the curriculum. Moreover, I would not prevent French-speaking students from enrolling in an English language CEGEP, a two-year post-secondary programme, or similar institutions. Finally, I would recommend improvements in the teaching of French as a mother tongue.

Moreover, Harvard’s new course on North America’s francophonie may prove an excellent initiative. Canada’s founding nations were France and Britain, but the French opened the North American continent. Francophonie overrides the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. It also overrides the expulsion of the Acadians, many of whom live in Louisiana. Moreover, 900,000 French Canadians moved to the United States between 1830 and 1930. They could not find work in Canada. They may no longer speak French, but they are part of North America’s francophonie.

La Patrie littéraire, the Literary Homeland

I could not write my book on Molière during my last sabbatical leave because I was asked to prepare two new courses: Animals in Literature and a course on contemporary Quebec literature. That year, however, I lectured in Stuttgart, Germany. One of my lectures was on la patrie littéraire, the literary homeland. In his Report on the Rebellions of 1837-1838, Lord Durham stated that French Canadians had no history and no literature.

They are a people with no history, and no literature. The literature of England is written in a language which is not theirs; literature which their language renders familiar to them, is that of a nation from which they have been separated by eighty years of a foreign rule, and still more by those changes which the Revolution and its consequences have wrought in the whole political, moral and social state of France.

Lord Durham’s Report on the Affairs of British North America, Sir C.P. Lucas, K.C.B., K.C.M.G. pp. 294-295 (Internet Archive)

I have noted elsewhere that denigration of French Canadians sparked the creation of two literary schools: l’École littéraire de Québec and l’École littéraire de Montréal. Moreover, François-Xavier Garneau wrote an Histoire du Canada depuis sa découverte jusqu’à nos jours.

As my sabbatical drew to a close I wrote an article entitled La Patrie littéraire: errance et résistance, published under my professional identity, Micheline Bourbeau-Walker. Bourbeau is my mother’s family name. La Patrie littéraire is a term used by René Dionne in his section of Gilles Marcotte‘s Anthologie de la littérature Québécoise. It is a fine description of the works written by French Canada’s two early literary schools. French Canada became a literary homeland. Its writers were French Canadians.

My contribution to this concept is an analysis of Antonine Maillet‘s Pélagie-la-Charrette, the above-mentioned La Patrie littéraire: errance et résistance. Pélagie-la-Charrette is a novel which earned its author, Antonine Maillet, the prestigious Prix Goncourt 1979. The novel features Pélagie, the narrator, and a group of Acadians travelling up the east coast of the United States pulling a cart, la charrette. They are returning to Acadie. Pélagie presents her characters as “the son of” or “the daughter of:” le fils à or la fille à: “Bélonie à Bélonie,” providing a lineage for her characters. Our ancestors are larger than we are. They validate us. So, Pélagie-la-Charrette is an anamnèse and a creation of things past. The term anamnèse is used in medicine where it lists the medical antecedents of a patient, but Pélagie-la-Charette is also une anamnèse. Pélagie builds a past.

I am mentioning la patrie littéraire because much of the literature produced by members of the Quebec and Montreal literary schools gave an identity to French Canada. Pamphile Lemay translated Henry Wadsworth Longfellow‘s Évangéline, a Tale of Acadie. Évangéline is a fictional character, but she lives forever. Historian Mona Ozouf also created une patrie littéraire: Récits d’une Patrie littéraire (Paris, Fayard), the literary works of women writers.

I will close here, concluding, first, that French should be in the curriculum in Quebec’s English-language schools and that the teaching of French as a mother tongue could be revised. I also wish to emphasize that a nation may be une patrie littéraire. French Canada will always be a sum of its literary works and other achievements.

—ooo—

My kindest regards to all of you. 💕

Alan Mills sings Un Canadien errant
Marc-Aurèle de Foy Susor-Coté L’Automne (Pinterest)

© Micheline Bourbeau-Walker
2 October 2022
WordPress


Les Anciens Canadiens/Cameron of Lochiel

09 Wednesday Jun 2021

Posted by in Quebec, Scotland, the Fur Trade, Voyageurs

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Cameron of Locheil by H. C. Edwards (EBook#53154)
Manoir de Philippe Aubert de Gaspé à Saint-Jean-Port-Joli (Patrimoine culturel du Québec)

Les Anciens Canadiens (ebooksgratuits.com). FR
Cameron of Lochiel (Archive.org ), Sir Charles G. D. Roberts, translator. EN
Cameron of Lochiel is Gutenberg [EBook#53154], Sir Charles G. D. Roberts, translator. EN

Last weekend, I worked on Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé‘s Anciens Canadiens. The novel can be read online. It was translated twice by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts, an excellent Canadian writer, but Mr Roberts’s second and finer translation, published in 1905, is entitled Cameron of Lochiel [EN]. I had never looked for a translation of Les Anciens Canadiens [1] and this English title intrigued me. Upon due reflexion, the title Sir Roberts gave Les Anciens Canadiens seemed altogether legitimate. As the events of the Anciens Canadiens unfold, Jules d’Haberville becomes Cameron of Lochiel. Scotland fell to England at the Battle of Culloden (1746), which is discussed in Les Anciens Canadiens. As for New France, it will also fall to England, but it will have a glorious past.

After our friends complete their studies, Jules joins the French army and Arché, the British army. Archie serves in North America during the Seven Years’ War, called the French and Indian War. Ironically and tragically, Arché, a soldier, is ordered to set ablaze his friends’ manoir. Nouvelle-France is conquered by the British. Therefore, the defeat of Nouvelle-France mirrors the defeat of Scotland, a more important country, and, by the same token, it puts Jules and Arché / Archie on an equal footing. They are the two sides of the same coin. So, metaphorically, Jules has become Cameron of Lochiel. His country has been defeated and, despite the role Arché / Archie plays during the war, the friends are reunited. In 1759, the French in Canada fell to England as did the Scots, in 1746.

After the “conquest,” Blanche d’Haberville will not marry Roberts’s Cameron of Lochiel, whom she loves, but Jules will marry an Englishwoman, thereby giving himself a second and redeeming identity, an instance of the collaborator’s ideology. He is the conquered and the conqueror. As for Aubert de Gaspé, the author and a Seigneur, he will use Arché’s guided tour of a Seigneurie to consign New France to a réel absolu, that of fiction, the life and customs of anciens Canadiens. Jules familiarizes Arché with the life of a Seigneur and that of the inhabitants of a seigneurie, not to mention the life of New France’s humbler subjects and its Amerindians.

Missing are New France’s voyageurs, river drivers (draveurs), and bûcherons. Their life and their songs are chronicled elsewhere. Les Anciens Canadiens nevertheless memorializes and mythologizes the presence of the French in North America. France will live forever on the shores of the St Lawrence River because it is remembered, an anamnesis.

La Patrie littéraire

When John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham wrote his Report on the Rebellions of 1837-1838, he described the French in Canada as a people lacking a history and a literature: un peuple sans histoire ni littérature. The French set about proving him wrong. Two literary schools were instituted, one in Montreal and one in Quebec City. The people of New France quickly built a patrie littéraire,[2] a literary homeland.  

Our colleague Derrick J. Knight was correct in suggesting a link between the Scots and the French in Canada. Matters would change when Confederation occurred. However, the spirit of the Auld Alliance would persist. Our Scottish explorers worked at an early point after the Conquest of Canada, formalized by the Treaty of Paris,1763. The Battle of Culloden took place less than two decades before the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, fought on 13 September 1759.

Canada’s bon Anglais is Scottish, he is both John Neilson and Cameron of Locheill. John Neilson stated that there could be a blend, un amalgame, of the two “races” in Canada, the French-speaking race, and the English-speaking race: the two sides of the same coin. There was an amalgame. Simon Fraser left Montreal accompanied by 19 voyageurs and 2 Amerindians. Explorers were guided by voyageurs and Amerindians whom they trusted.

Patriotism, devotion to the French-Canadian nationality, a just pride of race, and a loving memory for his people’s romantic and heroic past—these are the dominant chords which are struck throughout the story. Of special significance, therefore, are the words which are put in the mouth of the old seigneur as he bids his son a last farewell. The father has been almost ruined by the conquest. The son has left the French army and taken the oath of allegiance to the English crown. “Serve thy new sovereign,” says the dying soldier, “as faithfully as I have served the King of France; and may God bless thee, my dear son!”
Sir Charles G. D. Roberts’s Cameron of Lochiel (Preface)

An incident in the rebellion of 1745, David Morier (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Montcalm blessé à la bataille des plaines d’Abraham et ramené à Québec (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

RELATED ARTILES

Sources and Resources

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[1] There are four: The Canadians of Old, Georgina Pennée (1864); Charles G. D. Roberts (1890), and Jane Brierley (1997). There are anonymous translations.
[2] Bourbeau-Walker, M. (2002). La patrie littéraire : errance et résistance.
Francophonies d’Amérique,(13), 47–65. https://doi.org/10.7202/1005247ar

Love to everyone 💕

Philippe Aubert de Gaspé (1786-1871)
(Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

© Micheline Walker
9 Juin 2021
WordPress

Évangéline & the “literary homeland”

24 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by in Canadian History, French-Canadian Literature

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Évangéline, a Tale of Acadie

A few years ago, I published a paper in which I told about French priests who fled to England to escape the guillotine and were then sent to Canada where many became missionaries in Atlantic Canada. 

I gathered my information from l’abbé Henri-Raymond Casgrain’s Un Pèlerinage au pays d’Évangéline (1855) and Une Seconde Acadie (1894). These books are now available online, but I had to read them under the supervision of a librarian. 

First, let me point to the title of l’abbé Casgrain’s first book: Un Pèlerinage au pays d’Évangéline. As I have mentioned in an earlier blog, Évangéline is a fictional character created by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (27 February 1807 – 24 March 1882).  She is the heroine of a long poem published in 1847. Longfellow heard the story of an Évangéline while he was having dinner with Nathaniel Hawthorne (4 July 1804 – 19 May 1864), the author of the famous Scarlet Letter (1850).

The Deportation of the Acadians by Charles Jefferys

The Deportation of the Acadians, 1755

There may have been an Évangéline separated from a Gabriel during the deportation of Acadians. The soldiers who put these victims into boats separated members of the same family. But Longfellow’s Évangéline is a fictional character whom Acadians have mythified, thereby giving themselves a symbol that bestows selfhood, an identity. Longfellow’s poem was a great success, but he could not possibly have expected that his poem would be successful not only as a literary work but as resistance. The literary homeland is resistance.

As for l’abbé Casgrain, he corralled the fictional Évangéline into the giants that gave French-speaking Canadians both a past and mythology.  In fact, he gave her a homeland: un pays and he called his trip to Atlantic Canada a pilgrimage.  The title tells the story: Un Pèlerinage au pays d’Évangéline (A Pilgrimage to the Country of Évangéline).

However, Évangéline is a metaphor. When Acadians were deported, couples were separated.  Évangéline, therefore, represents all the women who were separated from their fiancés and, for that matter, her Gabriel represents all the young men who were separated from their betrothed. 

But what makes this book particularly fascinating is the presence in Atlantic Canada of French priests: aristocrats. Many Acadians had found their way back to their former land and even though their farms had been given new owners, they started to build a second Acadie… 

(I will stop here because I lost most of this blog, by clicking on the publish button.  I have rewritten two-thirds of my blog, but I am now tired.  So I will finish it in the morning and will also send you the words and music of a second voyageur song.)

Antoine Gérin-Lajoie, 1842 
Un Canadien errant
Alan Mills
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Evangeline: a Tale of Acadie (1847)
 
Love to everyone  ♥

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© Micheline Walker
24 January 2012
WordPress
 
 
 
 
 

The Voyageur Mythified

20 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by in Canadian History, Folksongs, Voyageurs

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The Canoe, by Tom Tomson

Tom Tomson was a member of the Group of Seven, Canadian artists.

The Voyageur’s Repertoire

The voyageurs’ repertoire consisted mainly of songs inherited from the trouvères, troubadours and the folklore of France. Different versions of this songs were composed, but they can nevertheless be traced back to the motherland.

As I noted in my last post, The Singing Voyageur, we know for certain that three songs were genuine voyageur songs.

  • Épouser le voyage (To Wed the Voyage),
  • Les Bois-Brûlés (The Brullis),
  • Le Six Mai de l’année dernière (Last year on the Sixth of May).

To this list, Barbeau [i] adds a song entitled Les Roses blanches (The White Roses). However, because there is a French song, not a folksong, entitled Les Roses blanches, it was somewhat difficult for me to call it a voyageur’s song. But we know that the voyageurs sang Roses blanches. In fact, I few days ago, I heard a folkloric Roses blanches on the radio. The song I heard could be the Roses blanches Marius Barbeau deems a genuine voyageur song.

As well, in the Beaver, Anne Frances Hopkins, an accomplished artist and the wife of an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Edward Hopkins, writes that “[m]any old chansons from Normandy—‘À la claire fontaine,’ ‘Rose blanche’—were popular canoe song.” [ii] Frances Anne Hopkins kept a record of a few songs, all of which are French folksongs, not voyageur songs. She travelled west in the ‘canot du gouverneur,’ when she journeyed west. She is a mostly reliable source. The eleven songs collected by Edward Ermatinger are folksongs brought to Nouvelle-France. [iii]

I also reread a paper I wrote on the voyageurs and I listed Rose blanche. To avoid confusion, I will add it to the three songs I listed yesterday.

Marius Barbeau’s authentic voyageur songs are:

  • Les Roses blanches (White Roses),
  • Épouser le voyage (To Wed the Voyage),
  • Les Bois-Brûlés (The Brullis),
  • Le Six Mai de l’année dernière (Last year on the Sixth of May).

We then have two songs discussed in Nute’s Voyageur, [iv] the first of wich could be a logger’s song or both a forestier and a voyageur song.

  • C’est dans la ville de Bytown (It’s in the Town of Ottawa)
  • Parmi les voyageurs (Among the Voyageurs)

We therefore know of six authentic voyageur songs, i.e. songs composed by voyageurs. If we do not include C’est dans la ville de Bytown (Ottawa) which could be a forestier song, the number goes down to six.

North West Company Coin

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A Brief Look at Historical Events

In 1874, the Quebec Act made French-speaking Canadians into full fledged British subjects and Canada was named Quebec. Guy Carleton, 1st Lord Dorchester  (September 3, 1724 – November 10, 1808) was then Governor of Quebec. Later, in 1791, Canada was divided into the Upper Canada and the Lower Canada under the terms of the Constitutional Act. It was no longer Quebec. There were English-speaking Canadians in Lower-Canada, but the majority of citizens were French-speaking Canadians

However, in 1837-1838, both Canadas rebelled against England because the Crown was helping itself to money levied in the Canadas. There were reprisals in both Canadas and Britain asked John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham (1792-1840), the governor-in-chief of British North America, to investigate the matter, particularly as it presented itself in Bas-Canada. In his Report, Lord Durham proposed that the two Canadas be joined, but he also stated that French Canadians did not have a literature and that they also lacked a history. For Canadiens, this was an insult, and some have yet to recover.

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La Patrie littéraire or The Literary Homeland

In her superb selection of voyageur songs, twenty songs notated (musical notation) and translated, Nute includes:

  • Petit Rocher (also known as La Complainte de Cadieux or Cadieux’s Lament, and
  • Mon Canot d’Écorce or Le Canotier (My Birchbark Canoe or The Canoeman).

It seems unlikely that these are voyageur songs. First, they were written in the 1860s when the voyageur had ceased to transport fur. Second, and more importantly, these two songs are part of the literature which, according to Lord Durham, French-speaking Canadians did not have. As soon as the Union-Act was passed (1841), French-speaking Canadians gave themselves the history and the literature which, according to Lord Durham, they did not possess. That period of French-Canadian literature is known as The Literary Homeland or La Patrie littéraire.

Antoine Gérin-Lajoie composed his lovely and famous Un Canadien errant or Un Acadien errant. We have heard this song, but I will nevertheless include it at the bottom of this blog. In theory, the melody is from the French-Canadian folk tune “J’ai fait une maîtresse.” I do not think this is the case. Moreover, French-speaking Canadians quickly endowed themselves with two literary schools, one in Montreal and the other, in Quebec city.

In  the wake of Lord Durham’s Report, François-Xavier Garneau [v] published his three-volume Histoire du Canada (1845-1848) and added a supplement, published in 1852. Canadiens, later called Québécois (1960) were also writing poetry and novels.

Le Canotier and La Complainte de Cadieux

Le Canotier was published in Casgrain’s Légendes canadiennes et Œuvres diverses (1861). L’abbé Henri-Raymond Casgrain [vi] (December 16, 1831 – February 11, 1904) was a prolific and excellent writer. Consequently, although some would like Le Canotier to be a folksong, it is a poem by l’abbé Casgrain.

However there are sixty-five (65) versions of Le Canotier or Mon canot d’écorce. Therefore, although l’abbé Casgrain’s wrote Le Canotier or Mon canot d’écorce poem, it was incorporated into the anamnesis, Plato’s theory, that followed the loss of the Canadiens’s Bas-Canada. The concept of anamnesis suggests remembrance and reincarnation. French-speaking Canadians started remembering and gave the voyageur mythic dimension.

The brothers Grimm collected folklore, thereby reaching into the past. As for Richard Wagner, he gave Germany a mythology and in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, he remembered Hans Sachs. He brought him back to life .

La Complainte de Cadieux, or Petit Rocher, it is a legend told by Joseph Charles Taché [vii] (December 24, 1820 – April 16, 1894) a nephew of Sir Étienne-Paschal Taché (5 September 1795 – 30 July 1865), in his Forestiers et voyageurs (1863). Cadieux’s Lament is a legend dating back to the seventeenth century. It had been passed down orally and was now entering a learned tradition. According to Marius Barbeau, it is not a voyageur song, but a forestier song.

As the legend goes, Cadieux “died in May 1709 after defending his family against the Iroquois at the Sept-Chutes portage on the Ottawa River. Cadieux diverted the Indians’ attention while his family, protected by the Virgin Mary, managed to navigate the rapids in a canoe. Prior to dying of exhaustion, he dug his own grave and lay in it.” [viii]

For Taché, [ix]

The mind of man can no more live on realism than his soul can live on the natural truths it perceives; [the mind] must venture into the unknown, [the soul] must find repose through faith in mysteries. Hence the need for our imagination to feed on magical notions. Herein lies the charm of legends and tales.

In short, the voyageur is now larger than life, but I am fascinated by the fact that he turned miserable circumstances into a source of pride and into pleasure. He had a job. He was un homme engagé, rather than unemployed. And he endeared himself to his employers. Besides, he was busy naming rivers, lakes, forts and he was taking explorers all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

 

Grey Day, by Tom Thomson

I have a recording of songs Voyageurs sang but I do not know how to incorporate it into a blog.

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[i] Marius Barbeau, “The Ermatinger Collection of Voyageur Songs (ca. 1830),” The Journal of American Folklore (New York:  Kraus Reprint Corporation, Vol. 67, 1966 [1954]), pp. 147-161. 

[ii] “Hopkins Book of Canoe Songs,” The Beaver, (Outfit 302.2, Autumn 1971), pp. 54-58.

[iii] Marius Barbeau, “The Ermatinger Collection of Voyageur Songs (ca. 1830),” The Journal of American Folklore (New York: Kraus Reprint Corporation, Vol. 67, 1966 [1954], pp. 147-161

[iv] Grace Lee Nute, The Voyageur (St. Paul, Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society, 1987 [1931]).

[v] Pierre Savard, “François-Xavier Garneau” http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/francoisxavier-garneau

[vi] Henri-Raymond Casgrain                                         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri-Raymond_Casgrain

[vii] “Joseph-Charles Taché”                                                                  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph-Charles_Tach%C3%A9

[viii] Hélène Plouffe, “Petit rocher de la haute montagne,” Canadian Encyclopedia http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/emc/petit-rocher-de-la-haute-montagne

[ix] Jean-Guy Nadeau, “Jean-Charles Taché,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=40576.