Bøger i French Writers of Canada serien

Marie Calumet is a light hearted, satirical account of rural life in the fictional parish of Saint Ildefonse, Quebec, in 1860. The appearance of Suzon, an alluring adolescent of 17 and cousin to Curé Flavel produces a scandal.The priest is forced to look reality in the face. The novelty of Suzon's sensual presence is its appearance in a place where it is traditionally forbidden: this is the first instance of a woman becoming a disturbing element in the French-Canadian novel.

Ashini is the fictionalized autobiography of a Montagnais Indian hunter and nomad; it explores his relationship with nature and his own kind, as well as his reactions to white civilization. The solution which Ashini invents for his own and his people's dilemma is as logical as it is unexpected.

Fanny is the fictionalized autobiography of Louis Dantin, the "nom de plume" of author Eugene Seers. Two great upheavals shape the character's life -- he leaves the priesthood and exiles himself to the United States, working for many years in the printing shop of the Harvard University Press. There he marries a black woman, cutting himself off doubly, according to the standards of his day -- from the conservative community in which he was raised and from the race-conscious one in which he lives. Fanny deals with these exceedingly intimate, painful and bittersweet years of his life which he devotes unremittingly to writing and criticism.

The Grandfathers is a reflection on the passage of generations in a rural community. Based on the life of the author's grandfather, the novel explores the mockery and sorrow of old age: in memories and poverty, in the beauty of yesteryear and its present mutilation. The old man's saving grace is his attachment to his farm and its inhabitants, his tenacity to the natural cycle of the seasons and crops, and the fecundity animal and human generations. In this lyrical novel, dreams and folk wisdom interweave to create a universe of fantastic beings in a rich but simple setting.

French Canadian Prose Masters makes the repertoire of nineteenth century French fiction in Canada available to the English reader and student. This volume presents a full range of French Canadian literature, containing a wealth of folklore, and reflecting the spirit of a people from its beginnings on this continent to the end of the nineteenth century. The social history as preserved by French Canada's storytellers, romancers and novelists speaks to the reader in an unambiguous way that formal histories rarely achieve.