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Marie-Claire Blais

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Marie-Claire Blais
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(born Oct. 5, 1939, Quebec, Que., Can.) French-Canadian novelist and poet. In two early, dreamlike novels, Mad Shadows (1959) and Tête blanche (1960), she staked out her territory, working-class people doomed to unrelieved sorrow and grinding poverty. A Season in the Life of Emmanuel (1965) received the Prix Médicis and was widely translated and discussed. Later works include The Manuscripts of Pauline Archange (1968, Governor General's Award) and Deaf to the City (1979, Governor General's Award). She received the Governor General's Award again in 1996 for Soifs (1995). She has also published poetry collections and several plays.

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French Literature Companion: Marie-Claire Blais
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Blais, Marie-Claire (b. 1939). Canadian novelist, who has also written poetry and plays. A sequence of powerful imaginative novels has made her a leading figure in Quebec literature. From the traditional closed structure of the family in her early works to the looser random patterns of involvement in the novels of the 1980s, it is the interaction of social, religious, and moral pressures and tempestuous individual imperatives that creates the artistic texture of her writing. In La Belle Bête (1959) humiliation and frustration drive the main character to sadism, murder, and self-immolation: no other escape from the ritualized codes of the family seems possible. Later novels show educated women in their chosen professions, but they are often devastated by the callousness of those near to them and by the extent of the social deprivation they encounter: Manuscrits de Pauline Archange (1968) and its sequels Vivre! vivre! (1969), Les Apparences (1970), and Visions d'Anna (1982). Blais showed from early on a preoccupation with delinquency and deviance: Tête blanche (1961): David Sterne (1967). Male homosexuality is explored in Le Loup (1972), lesbianism in Les Nuits de l'Underground (1978).

Some critics have considered all of Blais's work as a transposition into familial and personal terms of a social and political vision of Quebec. But she has specifically set out to probe and reflect the fabric, identity, and voice of Quebec society in a number of texts: Un Joualonais sa joualonie (1973), Le Sourd dans la ville (1979), Pierre ou la Guerre du printemps (1991). It would, however, be misleading to see any of these as realist novels. The strength and originality of Blais's writing lies in its blend of satire, fantasy, energy, and lyricism. Characters can take on mythical status, scenes become dream-like, language is transported. This extraordinary linguistic power is vested in the figure of Jean Le Maigre, the frail young genius of Une saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel (1965), Blais's most fêted novel. More than her other artist figures he testifies to a gritty resilience in the human spirit, as this startling imagination blossoms from the unlikely base of grinding rural poverty and a huge family, just the conditions that might be expected to stifle all individuality. But Blais's work is characterized by such paradoxes and insights, and the harshness of her vision is offset by respect and compassion.

[Margaret Callander]

Bibliography

  • P. G. Lewis (ed.), Traditionalism, Nationalism and Feminism: Women Writers of Quebec (1985)
Wikipedia: Marie-Claire Blais
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Marie-Claire Blais, CC, OQ (born 5 October 1939) is a Canadian author and playwright.

Contents

Life

Born in Quebec City, Quebec, she was educated at a convent school and at Université Laval. It was at Laval that she met Jeanne Lapointe and Father Georges Lévesque, who encouraged her to write and, in 1959, to publish her first novel, La Belle Bête (trans. Mad Shadows) in 1959 when she turned 20. She has since written over 20 novels, several plays, collections of poetry and fiction, as well newspaper articles. Her works have been translated into numerous languages, including English and Chinese. With the support of the eminent American critic Edmund Wilson, Blais won two Guggenheim Fellowships.

In 1963, Blais moved to the United States, initially living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There she met her partner, American artist Mary Meigs, and she later relocated to Wellfleet on Cape Cod. In 1975, after two years living in Brittany, she moved back to Quebec with her partner. For about twenty years she divided her time between Montreal, the Eastern Townships of Quebec and Key West, Florida.

Writings

Much of Blais' writing has been in the form of social commentary, with intermixed elements of good and evil in settings part real, and part fantasy. Her works lean toward the tragic, within a hostile society of vice and violence. The strength of Blais' writing ability is rewarding to the reader in spite of the darker aspects of her themes.

Impact

In 1972 she became a Companion of the Order of Canada.

Her works Le Sourd dans la ville (1979), Une Saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel (1965) and La Belle Bête (1959), have been adapted for the cinema, the latter by Canadian film director Karim Hussain in 2006.

Works

  • La Belle Bête (Mad Shadows) - 1959
  • Tête Blanche (Tête Blanche) - 1960
  • Le Jour est noir - ("The Day is Dark" in The Day is Dark and Three Travellers) 1962
  • Pays voilés ("Veiled Countries" in Veiled Countries/Lives) - 1963
  • Une Saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel (A Season in the Life of Emmanuel) - 1965
  • L'insoumise (The Fugitive) - 1966
  • Existences ("Lives" in Veiled Countries/Lives) - 1967
  • Les Manuscrits de Pauline Archange (The Manuscripts of Pauline Archange) - 1968
  • L'exécution (The Execution) - 1968
  • Les Voyageurs sacrés ("Three Travellers" in The Day is Dark and Three Travellers) - 1969
  • Vivre! Vivre! (The Manuscripts of Pauline Archange) - 1969
  • Le Loup (The Wolf) - 1970
  • Un Joualonais, sa Joualonie (St. Lawrence Blues) - 1973
  • Fièvre et autres textes dramatiques - 1974
  • Une Liaison parisienne (A Literary Affair) - 1975
  • Les Apparences (Dürer's Angel) - 1976
  • Océan suivi de murmures - 1977
  • Les Nuits de l'underground (Nights in the Underground) - 1978
  • Le Sourd dans la ville (Deaf to the City) - 1979
  • Visions d'Anna ou Le vertige (Anna's World) - 1982
  • Sommeil d'hiver (Wintersleep) - 1984
  • Pierre, la guerre du printemps (Pierre) - 1984
  • L'Île (The Island) - 1989]
  • L'Ange de la solitude (The Angel of Solitude) - 1989
  • Parcours d'un écrivain: Notes américaines (American Notebooks: A Writer's Journey) - 1993
  • Soifs (These Festive Nights) - 1995
  • (The Exile and the Sacred Travellers) - 2000
  • Dans la foudre et la lumière (Thunder and Light) - 2001
  • The Collected Radio Drama of Marie-Claire Blais - 2007

Awards

  • Prix France-Canada - 1965
  • Prix Médicis - 1966
  • Prix Athanase-David - 1982
  • Prix Ludger-Duvernay - 1988
  • Governor General's Literary Award - 1996
  • Prix d'Italie - 1999
  • W. O. Mitchell Literary Prize - 2000
  • Prix Prince Pierre de Monaco - 2002

References

External links


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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
French Literature Companion. The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Marie-Claire Blais".  Read more