Publication details
Une saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel de Marie-Claire Blais. Vision subversive
| Title in English | Une saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel by Marie-Claire Blais. A subversive vision |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | L’Enfant. Actes de la XXVe Université française d’été de l’Association Jan Hus Brno (VNJH Brno), Kokošovce, 28 juin – 1er juillet 2016 |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | http://www.pulib.sk/web/kniznica/elpub/dokument/Drengubiak2/subor/Kylousek.pdf |
| Field | Mass media, audiovision |
| Keywords | Quebec literature; adolescent novel; childhood novel; cynical subversion; personalism; Marie-Claire Blais |
| Attached files | |
| Description | Une saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel (1965), the third novel by Marie-Claire Blais, has established the reputation of the novelist in Quebec and in France (Prix Médicis 1966). The baroque like narrative style lends itself to multiple interpretations: Is it a parody of childhood novel? A parody of the Bildungsroman? A parody of the fictional biography? The story seems to be an extension to a long line of young heroes progressing from Balzac's young conquerors to Valery Larbaud's injured adolescents, to Cocteau's enfants terribles and to Roger Nimier's cynical and violent young men. The adult world, struck by noetic and ethical uncertainties, is subjected to a ruthless examination by children who build their world aside. Blais adds an irony that, while reversing the axiology and transcending prohibited themes (homosexuality, incest, prostitution), sets up a set of assertions / negations where the existential cruelty, devoid of any sentimentality, involves beauty and redemption through beauty. This aesthetic justification of Evil though the mediation of children is analyzed in connection with the personalism as an axiological background. |