Quebec literature is written in French makes it a part of what is now called the
Francophone literature of the world (a category that includes the literatures of
African, Asian, as well as European countries). But curiously, just as Quebec lit-
erature begs its difference from English-Canadian literature because of the lan-
guage in which it is written, it also pulls away from integration into French and
Francophone literatures because of its cultural links with North America.

A North American literature written in French: that is as succinct a definition
of Quebec literature as can be given. It is a definition that poses the entire prob-
lem confronting writers in Quebec for more than a hundred years: the culture of
North America is predominantly English; French is a predominantly European
language. It is within this contradiction that Quebec literature exists and flour-
ishes, because it is this contradiction that gives it its life force.

In the following chapters, titles of works are given in French, with English
translations in parentheses. Where an English translation of the French-
Canadian work exists, the English title given is that of the translation, and it
appears in italics.

To refer to some of the writings of New France ( 1535-1763) as literature may
seem pretentious. To be sure, the French who explored the continent in the six-
teenth and the seventeenth centuries, the Jesuits and other missionaries who tried
to evangelize the Indians, and the intendants and other officials who ran the
increasingly prosperous colony had little time to write anything but official
orders, papers, and reports. Yet some of what was written at this period, even
though it lacks the inventiveness and depth of sentiment of true literature,
deserves mention. For as the critic Gilles Marcotte has remarked, "Literature, in
Canada, is often only the accidental quality of writings which, like those of our
first explorers, are...void of literary intention.... We will read some texts of
Cartier as poems, and as some of the most beautiful of our literature."

Many of these early texts are redundant, flat descriptions by Frenchmen
(some of whom spent little time in North America) who never see further than
the colonialist-missionary purpose that was theirs. Others give evidence of true
powers of observation and of the will to put into (European)words the new land
and its people.

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