A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF FRENCH-CANADIAN AND MEXICAN-AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY POETRY by RODERICK JAMES MACINTOSH, B.A., M.A. A DISSERTATION IN SPANISH Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OP PHILOSOPHY Approved Accepted May, 1981 /V<9/J^ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am T«ry grateful to Dr. Edmundo Garcia-Giron for his direction of this dissertation and to the other mem­ bers of my committee, Dr. Norwood Andrews, Dr. Alfred Cismaru, Dr. Aldo Finco and Dr. Faye L. Bianpass, for their helpful criticism and advice. 11 ' V^-^'s;-^' CONTENTS ACKNOWI£DGMENTS n I. k BRIEF HISTORY OF QUE3EC 1 II• A BRIEF HISTORY OF MEXICAN-AMERICANS ^9 III. A LITERARY HISTORY OF QUEBEC 109 IV. A BRIEF OUTLINE OF ^MEXICAN LITERATURE 164 7» A LITERARY HISTORY OF HffiXICAN-AT/lERICANS 190 ' VI. A COMPARATIVE LOOK AT CANADZkll FRENCH AND MEXICAN-AMERICAN SPANISH 228 VII- CONTEMPORARY PRSNCK-CANADIAN POETRY 2^7 VIII. CONTEMPORARY TffiCICAN-AMERICAN POETRY 26? NOTES 330 BIBLIOGRAPHY 356 111 A BRIEF HISTORY OF QUEBEC In 153^ Jacques Cartier landed on the Gaspe Penin­ sula and established French sovereignty in North America. Nevertheless, the French did not take effective control of their foothold on this continent until 7^ years later when Samuel de Champlain founded the settlement of Quebec in 1608, at the foot of Cape Diamond on the St. Laurence River. At first, the settlement was conceived of as a trading post for the lucrative fur trade, but two difficul­ ties soon becam,e apparent—problems that have plagued French Canada to the present day—the difficulty of comirunication across trackless forests and m.ountainous terrain and the rigors of the Great Canadian Winter. Cham- plain hoped not only to establish a trading em^pire, but also to create a permanent French presence in America. This, he concluded, could only be accomplished through colonization* As in Spain's Affierican colonies, the Catholic Church was not slow to recognize the opportunities inherent in the New World. Soon after the first traders were active in the region, missionaries arrived from France to preach the Gospel to the Indians. The Recollets established their first church at Quebec in I615, and the Jesuits in 1622. The latter eventually sought to establish a theo­ cracy in Canada similar to that which they evolved in Paraguay. In any case, it has often been stated that the Catholic Church was the real power in Quebec. This was partly due to the strong hand of Frangois de Mont­ morency Laval, first bishop of Quebec from 16?^ to 168^, who consolidated the church power and made it directly responsible to the Pope rather than to the king of France. The power of the Quebecan clergy is decried by the cynic­ al Baron de Lahontan, a visitor to the colony in I683: One cannot have any pleasure, either at cards or in visiting the ladies, without the cure being told of it, and without his denouncing it from the pulpit. His indiscreet zeal goes so far as to nam,e persons? and if it goes so far as to re­ fuse Communion to noble ladies for wearing colored ribbons, for the rest you can judge for yourself. You can scarcely believe to what extent the author­ ity of these ecclesiastical seigneurs extends.^ Champlain's plan for permanent colonization becam.e a reality in I617 when the first fam.ilies of settlers arrived. Along with these came the farm.er Louis Hebert who is rememberd as Quebec's first "habitant." In spite of this, plans for colonization proceeded slowly, ham.per- ed by the trading interests which were intent on main­ taining the colony as a fur-producing wilderness. Twenty years after the founding of Quebec there were only slightly more than one hundred inhabitants in the colony and a mere six families engaged in farming.^ Through Champlain's efforts, plans were well under way to transport some ^,000 colonists to America, but this became impracticable when Quebec fell to the English in 1629—only to be restored to France once again in 1632. The restoration of French control marks the trans­ ition of Quebec from an isolated trading post to a bust­ ling village. Once more under the leadership of Champlain, trade was increased, fortifications improved to protect the settlers from the Iroquois who were bitter enemies of the French, and more forts were built such as the one at Trois RiviSres, and especially at P»lontreal where the In­ dian threat was particularly menacing. Squally important, a string of farms, trading posts and forts sprang up along the shores of the St. Lawrence, the lifeline of New France. Travelers comment during the early seventeen hundreds that the banks of this river resembled one continuous village. In spite of the Indian raids (until the Great Peace of 1701), the climate, the wilderness and increasingly severe attacks by the English, the colony grew though it did not prosper. If the I666 census registered only about 4,000 inhabitants in Quebec, that of I706 counted 16,000, in 1731 there were 3^,000, and by the time of the English conquest (17^3) Quebec had a population of 65,000—a figure well below the population estimates for New England or New Spain.-^ Historians disagree concerning the ori­ gins of this growth, some emphasizing immigration, others natural increase. One source concludesi ... it is doubtful if more than 10,000 men, women and children emigrated from France to the new colony between 1608 and 1756. Those who did come were not, as is commonly thought, principally Normans. Perhaps a fifth did come from that pro­ vince , but at least 20 other French provinces provided colonists.^ The small settlem.ent at Quebec was the social and political center of a vast colony. After 167^ it was the seat of a diocese stretching from Acadia (the present maritime provinces) to Louisiana. 3y the time of the con­ quest, in spite of the lack of m.anpower and capital. New France was a we11-organized agricultural society comprising a hundred parishes that were connected by roads or water­ ways and could sustain growing commercial activities. The priority given to road building in the early 1700*s had assured that the capital was accessible even during the winter m.onths when the rivers were frozen. Still, New France suffered chronically from certain disorders which prevented it from becoming economically successful in the sense that the English and Spanish colonies were. In the words of the historian Mason Wadej Corruption, the shortage of manpower and capital, the difficulties of comjnunication and transporta­ tion, and absentee direction all combined to pre­ vent New France from developing a strong and well- rounded economy,^ Many contemporary visitors have left portraits of the French-Canadian character during the colony. For ex­ ample, the Baron de Lahontan writes: The Canadians or Creoles are well built, sturdy, tall, strong, vigorous, enterprising, brave and indefatigable. They lack only the knowledge of literature. They are presiimptuous and full of themselves, putting themselves ahead of all na­ tions of the earth; and unfortunately they do not have the respect that they m-ight for their relatives (the French).^ The main reason why New Spain flourished while New France did not was demographic. Since the Spanish could command m.ore people, they were able to expand and to de­ fend their frontiers. New France could not survive against the more numerous British pushing upon her from the east. In The Outline of History. H. G. Wells contrasts the French and British positions in Amierica near the end of the colonial period. The French situation in relation to the Spanish colony could be com.pared with the same wordsi • • • France was pursuing a very dangerous and alarming game, a game even more dangerous and alarming on the m.ap than in reality. She had made real settlements in Quebec and Montreal in the north and at New Orleans in the south, and her ex­ plorers and agents had pushed south and north, making treaties with the American Indians of the great plains and setting up claims—without set­ ting up towns—right across the continent behind the British. But the realities of the case are not adequately represented in this way. The Brit­ ish colonies were being very solidly settled by a good class of people; they already numbered a population of over a mdllionj the French at that time hardly counted a tenth of that. They had a number of brilliant travellers and massionaries at work, but no substance of population behind them.7 Perhaps the most unfortunate episode to em.erge from the hostilities between the French and English during the midc^le years of the eighteenth century is the expulsion of the Acadians from what are now the provinces of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. The expulsion of 1755i in French called "Le Grand Derangem.ent," was the result of a century and a half of civil disobedience on the part of the stubborn ly independent French settlers along Canada's eastern coast. They had successfully avoided taxation and regimen­ tation by the French authorities, and after the conquest, they continued to treat the new English masters with stud­ ied indifference. In his book The Ga.iuns. V/illiam Faulkner Rushton comments on how this trait continues among the modem Acadians in Louisiana: "The Acadians learned not to take their governors too seriously as superiors, and that tradition persists in Louisiana today: a Cajun almost never says 'monsieur.' It's your first name, or your nick- nam.e, or nothing." Not only did the Acadians refuse to be taxed or count­ ed, they also rejected an oath of loyalty to the English crown.