Narratology and Text: Subjectivity and Identity in New France and Québécois Literature

Susan McKnight is an administrator of the Courts Technology Integrated Justice Project at the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General.

Narratology is the study of the process by which a story becomes a plot.
In the first part of this book, Paul Perron (a professor of French at
the University of Toronto and the principal of University College)
traces the history of narratology—with emphasis on the Parisian
theorists of the 1960s and 1970s—and provides a detailed examination
of A.J. Greimas’s theory and its relevance to the general theory of
narratology.

The theories covered in Part 1 are applied to writings from New France
and Quebec in Parts 2 and 3. In Part 2 (“Discovery, Conversion, and
Colonization”), Perron draws on the journals of explorers and
missionaries to give the reader a history of the French-Canadian
identity, an understanding of the various Native tribes and the
difficulties they presented for the settlers, an examination of the
cultural aspects of the society, and an appreciation of the plot
development process. In Part 3, examples such as Maria Chapdelaine and
Bonheur d’occasion are used to explore the subject “Nation and
Identity.”

The book is geared toward academics, with extensive notes, a glossary,
a detailed index, and a more than adequate bibliography.