Author | Marie-Claire Blais |
---|---|
Original title | Une saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel |
Translator | Derek Coltman |
Language | French |
Publisher | Grasset (France) Farrar, Straus and Giroux (US) Jonathan Cape (UK) |
Publication date | 1965 |
Publication place | Canada |
Published in English | 1966 |
A Season in the Life of Emmanuel (French : Une saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel) is a French Canadian novel by Marie-Claire Blais, published in 1965. [1]
The novel centres on a large rural farm family in Quebec headed by domineering matriarch Antoinette, [1] and depicts their lives around the time of the birth of Emmanuel, the family's sixteenth child. [1] The novel focuses primarily on Emmanuel's teenage siblings Pomme, Héloïse, "Septième" (Fortuné-Mathias) and Jean-Le Maigre, who are all in some state of rebellion against the family order; [2] in its themes of moral and sexual transgression, the novel is part of the anti-terroir tradition in Quebec literature.
The novel was adapted for film by director Claude Weisz in 1972.
The novel won the Prix Médicis and the Prix Jean-Hamelin in 1976.
The novel was selected for the 2008 edition of Le Combat des livres , in which it was defended by actor and director Serge Denoncourt.
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Marie-Claire Blais was a Canadian writer, novelist, poet, and playwright from the province of Québec. In a career spanning seventy years, she wrote novels, plays, collections of poetry and fiction, newspaper articles, radio dramas, and scripts for television. She was a four-time recipient of the Governor General’s literary prize for French-Canadian literature, and was also a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship for creative arts.
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The roman du terroir was strongly present in French Quebec literature from 1846 to 1945. It had as its goal the celebration of rural life during a period of rapid industrialization. The clergy and the state encouraged this type of literature; in fact, the moral conservatism of the roman du terroir "contrasts starkly" with the trends in the literature of France at the time. The Québécois establishment were hoping that support for this type of novel would strengthen Québécois morality, and perhaps halt an exodus of French Québécois from rural farming areas to Montreal and the textile factories of New England.
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