Postmodernism and the Quebec novel

Janet M. Paterson

In her study of postmodernism in recent Quebec fiction, Janet Paterson attempts to answer three main questions: Is there a postmodern Quebec novel? What are its forms? What are its sites of interrogation? The book looks at the works of Hubert Aquin, Madeleine Ouellette-Michalska, Gerard Bessette, Yolande Villemaire, and Jacques Godbout, and a new chapter explores the writing of Nicole Brossard. This study is representative, rather than exhaustive, as it analyses postmodern textual strategies in terms of discourse, intertextuality, the representation of the writer in fiction, the process of history, and feminist expression. Paterson believes that, in order to view a novel from a postmodernist perspective, it is necessary to see it as a temporal phenomenon, subject to the ambient culture.