This is an article about literature in Quebec.
16th and 17th centuries
During this period, the society of New France was being built with great difficulty. The French merchants contracted to transport colonists did not respect their end of the bargain, and the French and their Indian allies were at war with the Iroquois, allied to the English until 1701, etc. To add to these difficulties, the printing press was officially forbidden in Canada until the British Conquest.
In spite of this, some notable documents were produced in the early days of colonization and were passed down from generation to generation until today. The Voyage of Jacques Cartier, the Muses de la Nouvelle-France of Marc Lescarbot, the Voyages of Samuel de Champlain are memories of the exploration of North America and the foundation of New France.
The Relations des jésuites, Le Grand voyage au pays des Hurons of Gabriel Sagard, the Écrits of Marguerite Bourgeois were written by the many religious founders of New France who had undertaken the task of converting the Sauvages to Christianity.
Many songs and poems were transmitted orally by the early French settlers. A popular French ballad, À la claire fontaine was adapted by the voyageurs and gave us the version that is known today in Quebec.
The first patriotic song of Quebec (then known as le Canada) was written by a soldier, François Mariauchau d'Esgly. Entitled C'est le Général de Flip, it paid tribute to the resistance of the French at Quebec during the siege of General William Phips in 1690.
In France, Canada and New France in general caught the interest of many writers, notably François Rabelais who refers to Cartier and Roberval in Pantagruel.
18th century
Until 1760, the themes of nature, explorations, and the Sauvages continued to mark the imagination of the civilization of New France. The Moeurs des sauvages américains of Joseph-François Lafitau, Histoire de l'Amérique septentrionale of Bacqueville de la Potherie and the Histoire et description générale de la Nouvelle-France are in continuity with the writings of the preceding century.
The first verified use of the term Canadien to designate the descendants of French settlers in Canada was written in a song composed in 1756 in honour of Governor Vaudreuil after the military victory of Fort Chouaguen. In 1758, Étienne Marchand wrote a famous poem in Le carillon de la Nouvelle-France. This song tells the story of the victorious battle of Fort Carillon.
The first poem written by a Canadien after the cession of Canada to Great Britain is Quand Georges trois pris l'Canada written by an anonymous author in 1763.
The Quebec Gazette newspaper was founded in Quebec City by William Brown on June 21, 1764. The bilingual paper was published in both the French language and the English language and over the years survived to be the oldest newspaper still publishing in North America.
The literary trends of Europe and the rest of America slowly penetrated the cities, primarily Quebec City and Montreal. The writings of the Enlightenment and those produced at the time of the American and French revolutions were dominant in the available literature.
Valentin Jautard and Fleury Mesplet published the first journal of Quebec, the Gazette du commerce et littéraire, in 1778–79. Valentin Jautard, a disciple of Voltaire and sympathizer with the American cause, published many poems under different pseudonyms.
Some notable names of the time are Joseph-Octave Plessis, Ross Cuthbert, Joseph Quesnel and Pierre de Sales Laterrière.
In France, Voltaire wrote L'Ingénu, the tale of a Huron who visits France and also Chateaubriand, a French noble exiled in America, wrote Atala and René.
19th century
The 19th century marks the beginning of the first real literary works published by Quebecers, including Michel Bibaud, Pierre Boucher de Boucherville, François Réal Angers, Philippe-Ignace François Aubert de Gaspé, Amédée Papineau, Joseph Doutre, François-Xavier Garneau, Pierre Jean Olivier Chauveau, Louis-Antoine Dessaulles, H.-Émile Chevalier.
By the 1860s, Quebec authors were able to acquire a certain autonomy, as it became easier to publish a book and mass-produce it.
Antoine Gérin-Lajoie, Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé, Louis Fréchette, Arthur Buies, William Kirby, Honoré Beaugrand, Laure Conan, Edith Maude Eaton, William Chapman, Jules-Paul Tardivel, Winnifred Eaton, Pamphile Lemay were some of the key writers in this era.
An anonymous song, Les Raftsmen, became popular at the beginning of this century.
1900-1950 Émile Nelligan, a follower of Symbolism, published his first poems in Montreal at the age of 16 but within five years he was diagnosed with Dementia praecox and confined to a lunatic asylum, after which he did not write any more works. His collected poems were published to great acclaim in 1903, though he may not have been aware of it, remaining institutionalized until his death in 1941. Among his most celebrated poems is Le Vaisseau d'Or. A biographical film about his life, entitled Nelligan, was released in 1991.
Louis Hémon, a native of France who moved to Canada in 1911, wrote the famous rural Quebec romance novel Maria Chapdelaine (1913) while working at a farm in the Lac Saint-Jean region. The title character would go on to become a key figure in Quebec's national identity. Hémon did not live to see the book's widespread publication, as he died after being hit by a train in Chapleau, Ontario. The novel has been widely published in many languages and film adaptations were made in 1934, 1950, 1983 and 2021.
Roman Catholic priest, historian, and Quebec nationalist Lionel Groulx wrote many works including the 1922 novel L'Appel de la race and the 1951 historical study Histoire du Canada français. His conservative ideology of clerico-nationalism would have a major influence on Quebec society into the 1950s.
Claude-Henri Grignon wrote the early modernist novel Un Homme et son péché (1933), which satirized life in rural Quebec, breaking with Quebec's literary conventions of the time. The book has been adapted for the screen on several occasions, most notably the 2002 film Séraphin: Heart of Stone.
Priest and folklorist Félix-Antoine Savard won acclaim and a medal from the for the 1937 novel Menaud, maître draveur, set in the mountains of rural Charlevoix.
Under the pseudonym of 'Ringuet', physician and academic Philippe Panneton published Trente arpents (1938), the famous novel about the transition from agrarian to urban life in Quebec. The book won the 1940 Governor General's Award for fiction, among other prizes. Panneton would later become ambassador to Portugal.
Germaine Guèvremont wrote popular novels in the traditional roman du terroir style, such as 1945's Le Survenant and its 1947 sequel Marie-Didace. Roger Lemelin's classic novel of Quebec domestic life, Les Plouffe, was published in 1948.
In literature, the renovation during the 1930s is above all attached to the work by Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau which will explore the inner reality (Poésies) and the formal limits of writing in general (Œuvres en prose, Journal 1929-1939). In 1937, this writer published Regards et Jeux dans l'espace: this important book of Quebec poetry will have a deep impact on the future of the Quebec poetry, and its literature in general.David M. Hayne, "Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau", The Canadian Encyclopedia (Hurtig, 1988), p. 874Edward D. Blodgett, Five-part invention : A history of Literary History in Canada, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2003, 371 p. (), p. 81-86. See also Margaret Atwood, Survival : A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, Toronto, House of Anansi, 1987, 287 p.: p. 177-194 et p. 213-239 Several critics and historians of literature consider that the publication of Regards et jeux dans l'espace, in 1937, marks the beginning of modern literature in Quebec., voir également (en) Edward D. Blodgett, Five-part invention : A history of Literary History in Canada, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2003, 371 p. (), p. 81-86: p. 81)Philippe Haeck, « Naissance de la poésie moderne au Québec », Études françaises, vol. 9, n° 2, mai 1973, p. 95 (lire en ligne). The main writers who will succeed to de Saint-Denys Garneau during the 1940s oscillated between the experience of loneliness and impulsive individual revolt.
In the first half of the 20th century, some writers provoked the ire of the powerful Roman Catholic church in the province. The publication of Jean-Charles Harvey's 1934 novel Les Demi-civilisés was considered scandalous. He was fired from his job as a journalist and the book was banned by authorities. Abstract artist Paul-Émile Borduas, a founding figure of the Automatiste movement, wrote the manifesto Refus Global (1948), advocating the separation of church and state in Quebec, for which he was ostracized by the establishment of the time and dismissed from his teaching position.
Manitoba-born writer Gabrielle Roy's debut novel Bonheur d'occasion (1945), considered a classic of Canadian literature, described the conditions of life in Montreal's working-class Saint-Henri neighbourhood. After being published in English as The Tin Flute (1947), the book would win the 1947 Governor General's Award for fiction and sell more than three-quarters of a million copies in the United States. She won further acclaim for the dark, emotional novel Alexandre Chenevert (1954) and won a third Governor General's Award for Ces enfants de ma vie (1977).
1950-2000 Several important literary figures emerged from the Montreal Jewish community in the mid-20th century. A. M. Klein found great success in 1948 with The Rocking Chair and Other Poems, which won a Governor General's Award for poetry and sold in unexpectedly large numbers. He published his only novel, The Second Scroll, in 1951. Klein would come to be recognized as 'one of Canada's greatest poets and a leading figure in Jewish-Canadian culture'.
Mordecai Richler's fourth novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, set like much of his work in the largely Jewish Saint Urbain Street district of Montreal, was published in 1959 to great acclaim. This novel, Joshua Then and Now (1980) and Barney's Version (1997) would all be made into major feature films, while St. Urbain's Horseman (1971) and Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989) were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Richler's satirical 1992 book Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! stirred controversy by lampooning Quebec's language laws restricting the use of English, leading to criticism by Quebec nationalists.
The outspoken, flamboyant poet Irving Layton rose to national prominence with 1959's A Red Carpet for the Sun, which won the Governor General's Award. Leonard Cohen published the poetry collections Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956), The Spice-Box of Earth (1961) and Flowers for Hitler (1964) and the novels The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966) before going on to achieve international stardom as a musician. Louis Dudek published dozens of volumes of poems including Europe (1954), The Transparent Sea (1956), En Mexico (1958) and Atlantis (1967). He was invested as a member of the Order of Canada in 1984 as 'one of Canada's leading poets'.
Quebec City author Yves Thériault found success with his sixth novel Agaguk (1958), which dealt with cultural conflicts between Inuit and white men. This book sold 300,000 copies and was translated into seven languages. His next novel Ashini (1961) won the Governor General's Award for French Language Fiction.
Dancer Raymond Goulet writes in 1957 L'Âne de Carpizan, the first quebec novel in which the protagonist undergoes gender reassignment. Its main subjects are centered around satire and anticlerical themes. Upon parution, the novel did not make waves until its existence was rediscovered in 2019.