Between Languages and Cultures: Colonial and Postcolonial Readings of Gabrielle Roy - Hardcover

Chapman, Rosemary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0773534962 ISBN 13: 9780773534964

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009

Synopsis

Gabrielle Roy is one of the best-known figures of Québec literature, yet she spent much of the first thirty years of her life studying, working, and living in English. For Roy, as a member of Manitoba's francophone minority, bilingualism was a necessary strategy for survival and success. How did this bilingual and bicultural background help shape her work as a writer in French? The implications of her linguistic and cultural identity are explored in chapters looking at education, language, translation, and the representation of Canada's other minorities, from the immigrants in Western Canada to the Inuit of Ungava. What emerges is a new reading of Roy's work. Drawing on archival material, postcolonial theory, and translation studies, Between Languages and Cultures explores the traces and effects of Roy's intimate knowledge of English language and culture, challenging and augmenting the established view that her work is distinctly French-Canadian or Québécois.

About this title

About the Author

Rosemary Chapman is reader in French and Canadian studies, University of Nottingham, and author of Siting the Quebec Novel: The Representation of Space in Francophone Writing in Quebec.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0773534962
• ISBN 13: 9780773534964
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320