Gerard Bessette

Gerard Bessette (February 25th 1920 with Holy-Anne-of-Sabrevois, Quebec - February 21st 2005 with Kingston, Ontario) is a Romance cier, poet and Critique Canadian arts person (inhabitant of Quebec, Ontarian).

Biography

Bessette grows with Montreal, where it makes traditional studies with the Collège Saint-Ignace and traditional Externat Holy-Cross. It continues its studies with the Université of Montreal, supporting in 1950 a thesis of Doctorat on “the Images in poetry Canadian-Frenchwoman”. Not having been able to obtain a university station in Quebec, especially because of the fact that it is atheistic, it teaches during seven years with the Université Duquesne with Pittsburgh, with the the United States (1951-1957). It finds then a station with Kingston, initially with the royal military Collège of Canada in 1958, then at the Department of French Studies of the Université Queen' S (1959 - 1979). It is in this city that he dies, the February 21st 2005.

Work

The novel of Bessette knew a big change during the years. the Bookseller , his most popular novel and more studied, milked with subtle a Irony the question of the Censure in Quebec before the Quiet revolution. Itself victim of the situation which he denounces, the author passes by France to succeed in making publish this novel in 1960. This work is preceded by a first novel, the Brawl (1958), of realistic invoice, which tells the history of a student montréalais of tendency gauchist which must give up its studies by solidarity with his/her working comrades of the Montreal Transit Company . the Pedagogs (1961) offers a corrosive table of the Québécois collegial medium and artistic institution at the end of the years 1950.

In 1965, Incubation adopts the interior Monolog and an invoice connected with the Nouveau novel, marking a change of radical style in work. This experimentation will be continued and widened in the Cycle (1971), where seven different narrators devote themselves to streams of consciousness of a great complexity. Bessette obtains the Prix of the General governor for each one of these two novels. Commensale (1975) follows, written earlier, and which wrongfully was perhaps neglected because of that. In 1977, it publishes Anthropoïdes , that some regard as its masterpiece.

In 1979, the Six-month period describes the last six-month period of a professor of the University Princess devoting itself to a Psychocritique of Serge among deaths of Gilbert LaRocque. Thus, the border between the text and it except text is scrambled gradually with the years, because Bessette is delivered indeed to psychocritic, him also, in a literature in boiling and Three Québécois novelists ; it is even one of rare criticisms to have cultivated this approach systematically. Thereafter, the border between the romantic production and criticism continue to be thinned, which gives place to rather uncommon books, such as My novels and me (1979) and Dires d' Omer Marin (1985). Marine Omer, the narrator of this autobiographical account, is the same professor of the University Princess which tells the Six-month period . In Dires d' Omer Marine , this one speaks about various projects of retirement, planning to publish several new works. Unfortunately, this book will be the last published of living of Bessette.

All the work of Bessette aims at translating the complexity of the relationship between the individual and the collective, his unconscious, its myths.

Honors

1980 : Price Athanase-David

Works

1958 : the Brawl
1960: the Bookseller
1961: the Pedagog
1962: Temporal Poems
1965: Incubation
1968: a Literature in Boiling
1971: the Cycle
1973: Three Québécois Novelists
1975: Commensale
1977: Anthropoïdes
1979: My Novels and Me
1979: the Six-month period
1980: the Garden-party De Christophine
1985: Dires D' Omer Marine

External bonds

Given of the price of Quebec
Communicated National library of Quebec: death of Bessette
Advertisement of the Pantoute bookstore in Quebec: death of Bessette

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