Literature in French
Therefore, as I
told previously Canada is the result of a cultural mixture, and the literature
is not an exception. The literature has an Ethnical, English and a French face.
French
literature has been present since the French colonized Canada, in this time in
form of ‘Letters’ like Jesuits letters and personal correspondence, which
currently are autographic texts at that time. Also, there are histories and
spiritual writings related to France.
In fact, French
literature in Canada was marked by a style of write that used a language very
educated but which was searched a touch of humour, because of that the text of
French literature is very “colourful”. This is possible to see in the texts of Pierre
Perrault.
An anecdote is
about the printing presses, because the king never allowed that these machines
were installed in the colony of Canada, maybe a system of controlling the
opinion of the people. Due to all books were printed in France.
Until 1790 the
first Newspaper was printed in Quebec, It was a bilingual newspaper in French
and French Canadian that was a mixture of native language with French, but due
to some problems with publications was removed and after 1800 a newspaper only
in French Canadian was printed, it treated the topics of liberty.
Inside the
French literature existing subtypes of literature, one of these subtypes is the
Literary Homeland; it appeared after the war that joined Canada. What does mean
these words? Many years ago, Canada was separated in two parts; upper and lower
Canada. Thus, in this subtype appeared a classification of text that, I think about
this is important or interesting which are “rural texts”.
The rural novel,
which is part of rural texts, that was a mixture among dreams, a hero with his
antagonist, and, a bit of romantic elements.
French literature
produced abundance of poets of quality; I think this is part of romantic legacy
of French people with their sophisticate language.
Literature in English
After the
literature in French was the literature in English, and it treats about the
life in the colony in its first time, because of many people from other
countries believed that Canada had deserts and areas extremely cold, also it
had savage civilizations. This kind of commentaries created stereotypes about
the Canadians, for instance the people who visit a rural zone think that the
people from this place unknown about technology. In case of Canada, abroad
people think that the climate of the country was extreme.
As I said, the
writers in Canada always wrote exaggerating the places, and most of these texts
were novels and poems of romantic genre. An example of this exaggeration is a
text that accounts the story of heroes crossing the frozen north of Canada. The
reality was very different.
After this
problem the Canadian writers were worried in describing with precision the
flora and fauna, obviously the climate as well.
In relation to another
idea, the writers described these places, flora and fauna with local words. As
a result, a very interesting contribution of this kind of literature is the
borrowing. What about the borrowing? I refer a borrowing of French and
aboriginal languages, for instance the last one we can said that, “Igloo” is an
Eskimo[1] or
Inuit word, from French the word “gopher”.
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