Postmodernism and the Quebec Novel

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French studies at the University
of Guelph.

This study gives clear, precise, and very readable answers to three
fundamental questions: Is there a Quebec postmodern novel? What are its
forms? What are its sites of interrogation? It also defines the Quebec
novel as a temporal phenomenon subject to the ambient culture, a vision
of apocalypse but also of renewal.

But before presenting a closer analysis of one novel each by Hubert
Aquin, Gérard Bessette, Nicole Brossard, Jacques Godbout, Madeleine
Ouellette-Michalska, and Yolande Villemaire, the author elaborates a
postmodern poetics—its focus, perspectives, forms, and discourses, to
help the reader better understand the novelists’ artistic practices,
thought, and aesthetics.

When first published in Quebec in 1990, Moments postmodernes dans le
roman québécois won the Gabrielle Roy Prize for Québécois literary
criticism. For this English edition, the author reviewed her original
work and widened its scope. The book’s references are numerous,
precise, and most illuminating; its selective bibliography impressive
and informative. Moreover, Peterson’s critical discourse reads almost
like a novel.

Postmodernism and the Quebec Novel will prove most useful not only for
students of francophone literatures, but also for those wanting to know
more about what postmodernity is and how literary works of our time
cross cultural boundaries.