FREN 3500

Students examine various Indigenous Canadian literary productions (oral literature, plays, poetry, novels, literary criticism) in French and the sociohistorical and institutional contexts in which they emerged. In a more sociohistorical and political perspective, students examine the challenges of writing in the context of minority literatures, cultures and languages. Key concepts include colonial power relations, resistance and resilience, cultural survival, “writing back” and “writing home”. Other related but equally important concepts include literary reception of texts, and literary institutions. With regards to the aesthetic specificities of these texts, a greater focus is put on the formal characteristics of these texts: characters, plots, and representations of space and time as particular expressions of worldviews. Much emphasis will be put on the inseparable symbolic and formal characteristics which inform these texts.