Anglo-French Relations and the Acadians in Canada's
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Göteborgs universitets publikationer - e-publicering och e-arkiv GOTHENBURG STUDIES IN ENGLISH 98 ______________________________________ Anglo-French Relations and the Acadians in Canada’s Maritime Literature: Issues of Othering and Transculturation BIRGITTA BROWN For C. R. Dissertation for PhD in English, University of Gothenburg 2008 © Birgitta Brown, 2008 Editors: Gunilla Florby and Arne Olofsson ISSN 0072–503x ISBN 978-91-7346-675-2 Printed by Intellecta InfoLog, Kållered 2010 Distributor: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, Box 222, SE-405 30 Göteborg, Sweden Abstract PhD dissertation at the University of Gothenburg, 2008 Title: Anglo-French Relations and the Acadians in Canada’s Maritime Literature: Issues of Othering and Transculturation. Author: Birgitta Brown Language: English Department: English Department, University of Gothenburg, Box 200, SE-405 30 Gothenburg Anglo-French relations have had a significant influence on the fiction created in Canada’s Maritime Provinces. The 18th century was a period of colonial wars. Contacts between the English and French in Canada were established and de- termined by the hostilities between the two colonizing nations, France and Great Britain. The hostilities passed on a sense of difference between the two nations through situations of othering. Contacts, however, always generate transcultural processes which transcend or mediate cultural difference. Othering and transculturation are closely interdependent phenomena acting in conjunc- tion. They work in processes manifesting themselves in so-called contact zones both during the colonial era and in a postcolonial context. This study investi- gates how processes of othering and transculturation are explored and dis- cussed in a number of Maritime novels, Anglophone and Acadian, published in different decades of the 20th century, in order to account for a broad perspec- tive of the interdependency of othering and transculturation. With the deportation of the Acadians in 1755 and the Peace Treaty of Paris in 1763, French and Acadian influence was eclipsed in the Maritime region until 1881 when the first National Acadian Convention took place. A new Acadie was born, without territory, and today Anglophone Maritime fiction and Acadian fiction narrate a co-existence and a cohabitation where the historical past is an important agent in contemporary society and its literary production. Keywords: Maritime Provinces, Acadie, othering, transculturation, colonialism, postcolonialism, Mary-Louise Pratt, Fernando Ortiz, Roland Walter, Sir Charles G. D. Roberts, Thomas Head Raddall, Antonine Maillet, Claude Le Bouthillier, David Adams Richards, Janice Kulyk Keefer, Jeannine Landry Thériault. Acknowledgments I would like to express my thanks to the following persons who have assisted me in various ways throughout my work to complete this thesis. First of all, to Hans Löfgren whose supervision has been indispensable for its completion. I am very much in debt to Professor Marie-Linda Lord, University of Moncton, Canada, whose expert supervision has been decisive for the progress of my work. To Professor Gunilla Florby I would like to express my sincere gratitude for her support and invaluable advice. Also, I would like to thank Britta Olinder for her interest in my project from the very start. I am particularly indebted to my colleague Ikuko Jones for taking care of all the interlibrary loans necessary for my research over a number of years. With unfailing swiftness and kindness she has seen to it that the right volumes and articles arrived at the appropriate moment. Also, I want to thank my colleague Lena Berntler for standing in for me, whenever I had to be absent from the li- brary where we both work. I am very grateful to the University Library for a grant making it possible for me to study in the library at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris for a month at the very beginning of my research. Special thanks go to my friends Lisbeth Stenberg and Abby Peterson who have read me and have engaged in discussions with me in the course of my work. Finally, I want to thank Gunnel Johansson for her meticulous and quick proof-reading. Table of Contents 1. Introductory Chapter.................................................................................... 1 Anglophone Maritime Fiction ............................................................................... 6 Sir Charles G. D. Roberts........................................................................................8 Thomas Head Raddall............................................................................................. 9 Janice Kulyk Keefer ...............................................................................................10 David Adams Richards ..........................................................................................10 Acadian Fiction.......................................................................................................12 Antonine Maillet ..................................................................................................... 13 Claude Le Bouthillier ............................................................................................. 15 Jeannine Landry Thériault .....................................................................................16 The Postcolonial, Othering, and the Transcultural............................................17 The Contact Zone ................................................................................................. 24 Summary of the Thesis ......................................................................................... 27 2. Historical Context......................................................................................30 First Contacts with the Micmacs.......................................................................... 31 Anglo-French Contacts..........................................................................................37 The Deportation of the Acadians.........................................................................39 Louisbourg and Halifax ........................................................................................ 46 Exile and “Errance” .............................................................................................. 50 3. Othering .................................................................................................. 60 The Colonial Other ............................................................................................... 67 The Contemporary Other .....................................................................................81 4. Transcultural Contacts...............................................................................96 The Colonial Frontier as Transcultural Contact Zone..................................... 99 Grand Pré .............................................................................................................. 101 Halifax and Louisbourg .......................................................................................105 Ruisseau, Louisbourg, Paris, Versailles..............................................................108 The American Colonies ....................................................................................... 116 Liminal Space as Transcultural Contact Zone..................................................122 Spruce Harbour.....................................................................................................124 Bois Tranquille and Les Falaises.........................................................................128 Four Corners.........................................................................................................130 The River ............................................................................................................... 132 5. Conclusion............................................................................................................... 137 Works Cited ................................................................................................................140 1. Introductory Chapter By Canadian history also is to be understood one history, not one French and one British, but the entire history of all Canada. There are not two histories, but one history, as there are not two Canadas, or any greater number, but one only. Nor are there two ways of life, but one common response to land and history expressed in many strong variants of the one, it is true, but still one in central substance. The reason for this is that the history of Canada after 1760 is only a continuation and exten- sion of the history of Canada before 1760. There is but one narrative line in Canadian history. (Morton, W. L. qtd. in Bennett 164) Il nous reste encore un peu de vie pour faire renaître un pays. (Comeau, C. qtd. in Runte 94) Canada’s Maritime Provinces, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, constitute a region historically and culturally contested as well as shared by the native Amerindians, primarily the Micmacs,1 and by the French and the British colonizing settlers, and their descendants. On the arrival of the first European explorers to the Maritimes in the 16th century the Micmacs were a hunting and gathering people, socially organized in harmony with the seasons (Plank, Unsettled 26). In the summers they congregated in the villages, while in wintertime they