Bodies of Correspondence in Contemporary Québec: from Gabrielle Roy to le vrai Gab Roy A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Kathryn M. Droske IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Dr. Eileen Sivert September 2016 © Kathryn M. Droske 2016 Acknowledgements I wish to thank my advisor, Dr. Eileen Sivert, for offering steadfast support throughout the whole of my graduate studies and especially as I drafted my dissertation. For always showing me kindness and confidence and for giving my interest in the literature of Québec real roots and direction, Recevez, Madame, l’assurance de ma profonde gratitude. To all of my committee members, Doctors Daniel Brewer, Mary Franklin-Brown and Juliette Rogers: it has been a pleasure to learn with you and from you. For your powerful example, careful readings and discerning questions, Je vous prie d’agréer, Monsieur et Mesdames, l’expression de ma considération distinguée. To the University of Minnesota, who supported my research with a Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in 2014-2015; to the Ministère des Relations Internationales, the Association Internationale des Etudes Québécoises, and the American Council of Québec Studies, who funded my Québec Research Grant in the fall of 2011; and to the mentors who shaped and supported my work in Montreal, especially Sophie Marcotte, Louis Patrick Leroux and the Groupe de recherche sur Gabrielle Roy. For making this project possible, Veuillez croire à mon respectueux souvenir. To those working within and outside of my field who have helped me to develop interdisciplinarity in my research, to write and to refine my writing, and to make timely progress on my dissertation, especially Liz Przybylski, Meenasarani Linde Murugan, Sarah Boardman, Jiewon Baek, Anaïs Nony, Joseph Coyle and Corina Bernstein. For your solidarity and support, Toutes mes amitiés. To my family, in whom I find a tremendous community of care: my father, who has offered invaluable insights into the journey to and through a doctoral degree; my mother, who remains my most consistent and beloved cheerleader; Tyler, who continues to teach me by example what it means to ask big questions, to pursue one’s passion, and to go to work in the face of existential crises. For your understanding, patience and encouragement, Je vous embrasse de tout mon cœur. Lastly, to my penpals old and new, who have taught me the thrill of writing, receiving and revisiting letters, postcards, emails and texts. Thank you for grounding this work in real, relevant and pleasurable practices. Au plaisir de vous relire. i Table of Contents Introduction: The Legacy of Letters in Québec……………………………………………...1 Chapter 1: Post(e) Mélina: Reading After Gabrielle Roy’s Letter(s)……………............41 Chapter 2: When the ‘After’ is ‘Already’: Philosophical Fiction of the Postal………......84 Chapter 3: Yetis and Trolls: The Monstrum horrendum of Epistolary Fetishism……..…125 Conclusion: Reflections on the Epistolary………………………………………….……..172 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………187 ii The Legacy of Letters in Québec Pendant longtemps, des textes qui ailleurs appartiendraient aux marges de l’histoire littéraire en forment ici l’armature. -Michel Biron et al., Histoire de la littérature québécoise The celebrated book Histoire de la littérature québécoise traces nearly half a millennium of Québec’s literary production, from 1534 (the year Jacques Cartier “discovered” Canada and composed the first of three travel accounts) to 2005. Produced by Michel Biron, François Dumont and Elisabeth Nardout-Lafarge in collaboration with Martine- Emmanuelle Lapointe, Histoire de la littérature québécoise was published by Les Éditions du Boréal in 2007 and again in 2010, and continues to serve as a definitive reference guide on the literature of Québec for students and specialists alike. The brief excerpt from the volume quoted above affirms that Québec’s foundational texts are writings that in other places, and “pendant longtemps,” would be relegated to the margins of literary history. The surrounding passage clarifies the types of texts in question: Pour beaucoup de commentateurs, y compris nous-mêmes, le meilleur de la littérature québécoise se trouve à certaines époques du côté de genres non canoniques, comme la chronique ou la correspondance, et non du côté du roman ou de la poésie. Le mot “littéraire” a donc une acception particulièrement large au Québec. Pendant longtemps, des textes qui ailleurs appartiendraient aux marges de l’histoire littéraire en forment ici l’armature (12). 1 In this excerpt, the trio of scholars not only justifies the inclusion of ‘non canonical’ texts in their collection, but claims chronicles and correspondence among “the best” of Québec’s literary production. Biron et al. do not overtly specify what constitutes the “certaines époques” when such texts reign supreme, but immediately prior to the passage cited here they allude to the period of “la Nouvelle-France” (1534-1763) as well as the 19th century, and it is presumably these epochs when non-canonical genres enjoy the privileged status the authors describe.1 Indeed, these centuries are associated with an abundance of epistolary texts. From the years between the arrival of Cartier in Canada (1534) and the Conquest by the British military (1760), a total of around fifty French-Canadian texts have been preserved and praised for their historic and literary worth. Correspondence penned by legendary figures like Marie de l’Incarnation,2 Elisabeth Bégon3 and Jesuits Paul le Jeune and Jean 1 Indeed, the volume’s two opening sections (“Les ecrits de la Nouvelles-France (1534-1763)” and “Écrire pour la nation (1763-1895)”) include the largest number of letters and chronicles. While these genres are not entirely absent from later sections of the book, poetry, novels and theatre represent the vast majority of the works cited therein. 2 Marie de l’Incarnation, née Marie Guyard (spelled “Guyart” in some scholarship), is widely heralded as early Québec’s most celebrated correspondent. An Ursuline from Tours, the earliest letters of Lettres de la révérende mère, penned in 1632, predate her departure for the new world. These letters express Marie’s “extrème désir d’aller en Canada” (36) and document her repeated requests to be stationed there following a powerful mystic vision. Marie became Mother Superior of the first convent in Québec in the early 17th-century and a prolific letter writer to her family back in France (particularly her son, Claude Martin) and to her religious community. Hundreds of her letters (filling many hundreds of pages) are available in manuscripts at the Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa as well as in widely-available published collections in print and online. Many of Marie’s letters informed the annual reports sent to superiors in Europe from her contemporary Jesuit missionaries also stationed in the region. Caroline M. Woidat carefully traces the citations of Marie ‘Guyart’’s writings across six distinct volumes of the Jesuit Relations, where her words are included “with and without crediting her as author” (14). 3 Born in Québec in 1696, Élisabeth Bégon is the author of nine distinct “cahiers” of letters intended for her son-in-law, who moved between France and Louisiana. Bégon filled her notebooks without always knowing where to send them and without much confidence that they contained material of interest to their addressee. The missives act as a source of consolation to 2 de Brébeuf4 represents a substantial portion of these extant writings. Well before a literary institution was established in the “New World,” letters moved between France and its nascent colony in Canada, documenting the experience and developing the imaginary of life in la Nouvelle France. Critical volumes and anthologies of Québec’s literary history consistently highlight correspondence of the 17th and 18th centuries, and to a somewhat lesser extent that of the 19th century as well,5 as major works. Histoire de la littérature québécoise, La Vie littéraire au Québec, Le Québec, un pays, une culture and Histoire de la littérature canadienne-française all affirm the important, even foundational, place of letters in Québec’s early literature. the widow who mourns the separation from one of her few remaining kin (much of the language of the letters conveys more than maternal affection, suggesting Bégon harbored a thinly-veiled illicit love for her late daughter’s husband), as well as a daily documentation of life between 1748 and 1753, in some of the last years of the French régime in Canada before English control. Bégon’s letters fell into obscurity for centuries, but were rediscovered in 1932 and later published as Lettres au cher fils. Despite Bégon’s own doubts as to their worth, her missives have proven to be of great interest to 20th and 21st-century scholars as they represent the only collection of writings by a French-Canadian lay woman of her time (See the article by Marie-France Silver and Marie-Laure Girou-Swiderski). 4 The Jesuit Relations composed between 1632 and 1672 represent the most extensive and illustrative writings of early Québec and Canada. Though they are rarely thought of as epistolary texts, historian Allan Greer reminds us that the Relations are compilations of letters: “It began with detailed letters from priests in the field, the most important usually being the one brought down by the summer canoe brigade from the Huron Country. The superior at Québec would compile and edit these letters, paraphrasing some parts, copying others verbatim, and forwarding the whole package to France” (14). Father Paul Le Jeune was the first superior at Québec, and as such he compiled and composed the annual Relation from 1632 until 1639. In fact, Le Jeune continued to write and influence the Jesuit Relations from New France well beyond 1639, for he was succeeded by Vimont, a Superior far less fond of writing the Relations than his predecessor, so Le Jeune continued to write until 1642.