Exiguity and Narrative Identity in Canadian French-language Literature Outside Quebec: Marguerite A. Primeau, France Daigle and Marc Prescott

This article studies samples of French-language texts produced in Canadian provinces outside Quebec, the aim being to elucidate the questions of narrative identity, the relationships with place and with the English and French languages as these evolve in the literary works. Expression of a fragile and exiguous literary condition, the texts are also narrations of a state beyond the question of dominant and dominated linguistic cultures. The following works are studied: Sauvage-Sauvageon (1984) by Marguerite A. Primeau; Pas pire (1998) by France Daigle; Sex, Lies et les Franco-Manitobains (2001) and Fort Mac (2004) by Marc Prescott. Different geographical corners of Canada are represented: the West, the Atlantic East and the Prairies. In Sauvage-Sauvageon, the story moves between a place of the present (the Canadian West coast in British Columbia) and a number of places of the past: Quebec, Alberta and Europe.