The Reception of Québécois Literature in English Canada 1900-1940: The Role Played by Translation
The necessity of establishing objective parameters for CALQ, a research project on the reception of Quebec literature in English Canada, led to a heightened awareness of the complexity of concepts such as “reception”, “Quebec literature” and “English Canada”. The present article concludes, after examining the role played by translation in the above-mentioned reception between 1900 and 1940 – a particularly vital period when Canadian literature was essentially “invented” as a self-aware polysystem – that it is also essential, in this context, to problematize the word “translation”. It is clear that translation played a vital role in the awakening of interest in Quebec literature during this period, a fact eloquently illustrated by the « Maria Chapdelaine phenomenon » and the statistics of studies published. However, the long list of untranslated Quebec literary works that are also discussed in English-Canadian periodicals or literary manuals point to the importance of other factors such as bicultural “literary tandems” like Lorne Pierce/Mgr Camille Roy, as well as the fact that, generally speaking, the English-Canadian elite of that period was well able to read complex literary texts in French even if it was incapable of speaking the language. This is not to say, however, that one should minimize the ideological impact on English Canada of “translations”, whether these be translations of works such as Jean Rivard or Maria Chapdelaine, or the translation of Quebec culture as offered by the habitant poetry of William Henry Drummond and literary manuals by authors such as Lorne Pierce, Vernon Blair Rhodenizer and Archibald MacMechan.