R. Chapman, Between Languages and Cultures. Colonial and Postcolonial Readings of Gabrielle Roy

CHAPMAN, Rosemary, Between Languages and Cultures. Colonial and Postcolonial Readings of Gabrielle Roy, Montréal / Kingston, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009, 320 p.

ISBN 0773534962

RÉSUMÉ

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.

TABLE DES MATIÈRES

Tables vi
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Power Relations in Roy's Manitoba 3
1 The Ambivalences of Learning to Be Canadian 19
2 Colonial Legacies and the Clandestine Curriculum 69
3 Bilingualism, Diglossia, and the Other's Language 107
4 Translating Difference: Conveying Context 151
5 Writing Canada: Finding a Place Between 197
Notes 249
Bibliography 285
Index 303

BIOGRAPHIE

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.