The origins of the French-Canadian novel and the construction of a national identity (1837–94)

If the first novels published in Canada were adventure stories with romantic overtones, the influence of the Catholic Church soon prevailed in reanchoring novelists’ inspiration in patriotism and landownership, ideologies rather more conducive to the production of historical novels and rural tableaux de mœurs. The principal concern of the clerical authorities was to encourage literary works that were completely distinct from the French novel of the era, perceived to be decadent and therefore threatening to the Christian faith of its French Canadian readers.

The year 1837 saw the near simultaneous publication of the first two novels published in French Canada, at a time when patriotic rebellions erupted against British colonial power. L’Influence d’un livre, by Philippe Aubert de Gaspé fils, recounts the misadventures of a naive pair who seek the path to fortune in a popular alchemy handbook. News items, legends, and local customs, depicted in the manner of Walter Scott, make up this flamboyant tale, which ironically suggests “l’extrême pauvreté intellectuelle de cette société anachronique.” Probably written under the guidance of the author’s erudite father, the seigneur of Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, the novel was not particularly well received, perhaps due to the confusion resulting from the unrest that marked 1837. The “Canadian chronicles” by Franois-Réal Angers, which were published in the summer of the same year under the title Les Révélations du crime ou Cambray et ses complices, take as their theme a spate of thefts, an act of sacrilege and a murder, all of which were perpetrated in the region of Quebec City.