Once a month, under the pen of Quebec writers, The duty of literature proposes to revisit in the light of current events the works of ancient and recent history of Quebec literature. Discoveries? Proofreading? Different look? A choice. An initiative of the Académie des lettres du Québec in collaboration with The duty.
Current events have brought the question of the status of the French language and the nature of its relationship with the English language back into the public arena. Is the French language really on the way to perdition? Would it be spoken so badly that it would no longer be worth keeping? What is the meaning of having a common language? These questions are not new.
Discourses on the language spoken here have regularly testified, over time, to the collective shame felt in the face of its alleged poverty, as if the richness of a language could only be measured by its relationship to fault. However, the literature offers different answers. So the room A campaign party by Pierre Petitclair, the only prominent Quebec playwright before 1867, offers lessons that deserve to be pondered, especially since Quebec dramaturgy has been able to echo them.
Inaugural gestures
Pierre Petitclair (1813-1860) was part of the generation of writers who, in the 1830s and 1840s, set themselves the goal of creating Canadian literature. He publishes poems, songs and stories. Above all, he wrote plays, performed to packed houses and published in books and newspapers. The words of Lucie Robert, for whom “theatre represents language; […] gives it a public image; […] the poster”, describe well the work of Petitclair, which deploys a state of the French language, offers a readable image and manifests its presence in the public space.
In Quebec in 1851, the population was modest, 42,052 people, Anglophones accounting for more than a third, even half. Representing the French language is therefore a political gesture.
Petitclair’s pieces are distinguished by the finesse of the dialogues, in which each character speaks a language of their own in terms of sound (pronunciations and accents being translated by various processes) as well as in terms of vocabulary, always anchored in specific geographical and professional backgrounds — the critics moreover praise the way in which Petitclair paints the spoken language. They are in the vein of vaudeville, very fashionable in France at that time. This popular form, tending towards social or political criticism, combines dialogues, music and songs.
Griphon or the revenge of a valet(1837) depicts the forced submission of girls, at a time when United Canada is questioning the legal status of women. The gift (1842) recounts, from a comical point of view, the failure of a scheme aimed at seizing a fortune thanks to a contract of donation, a practice strongly criticized in the 1840s. Finally, A campaign party (1857) tackles frontally the question of the common language from the angle of Anglomania, a theme dating back to the 18e century. The author thus authorizes himself to make fun of those who are infatuated with the English language, fashions and manners.
The theme inspired Joseph Quesnel to write his play Anglomania or The english dinner (circa 1803). It is still very much alive in the Quebec of 1857, where Anglomania and angification are debated and where the memory of French satires of Anglomania lives on. Think of the popular success of vaudeville Malvina by Eugène Scribe (1828), a song by Gabriel, Anglomania (1822), and that of Béranger, The boxers or the Anglomaniac (1814), the title of which eventually gave its name in Lower Canada to the air With feet, with fists on which it was sung, a clear sign of its popularity.
A campaign party is a play where we cheerfully make fun of a young Anglomaniac who has changed his first name from Guillaume to William and who prides himself on being ” fashionable “, adopting English customs, speaking English or peppering his speech with English words. He hopes to marry a young Englishwoman, Malvina, who is Francophile, but to whom he persists in speaking English.
The story takes place in Saint-Augustin and recounts the visit of a city dweller, Louis, to his brother Joseph for a “country trip”. Petitclair depicts the visitors — Guillaume/William, his father, Louis, the beautiful Malvina and his brother Brown — and those who welcome them — Uncle Joseph, cousin Flore, his friend Eugénie, Guillaume’s former lover /William, and Flore’s lover, Baptiste, and his friends. They are joined by musicians and villagers.
A language theater
The characters certainly each have their own character, but also, which is less common, a spoken language of their own, and which testifies in the first place to their social class and their degree of education. The three young girls, who went to the convent, speak the most refined French, gently mocked by Baptiste, but Eugénie and Flore sometimes use Canadianisms; their language is marked by the rural environment which is theirs, contrary to that of Malvina.
The two brothers do not speak quite the same language either: that of Joseph is similar to that of the villagers, he is not reluctant to use popular expressions such as “Eugénie à Michon José-Jean-Gnace”, ” saprelotte” or “a closing page”. As for Baptiste, his friends and the other villagers, they speak a popular language whose phonetic, rhythmic and lexical varieties Petitclair portrays, which makes the dialogues extremely lively.
We must add to this group portrait Brown the facetious, who presents Malvina as “my sister, who speaks French almost as well as moâ”, and who exercises, with the help of Flore, to say “in love” without ever to arrive at. The language of Guillaume/William oozes contempt for the countryside: “we don’t speak English, the fashionable language, any more than we wear fashionable clothes” .
During this “campaign party”, the spectator will see Guillaume/William make a fool of himself by pretending not to know where he was born (in Saint-Augustin) and not to recognize his former friend, Baptiste, and his former lover, Eugénie. Guillaume/William will also be the target of jokes that will embarrass him. Leaving for a hunting expedition in a canoe that is taking on water, he finds himself “soaked like a dishcloth”, according to Baptiste, who is amused by the good trick he played on him with the involuntary help of a Brown hilarious.
Worse still, the dry clothes in the fabric of the country, flanked by the toque of the patriots, lent by Flore and far from English chic, transform him into “a good fat inhabitant”, says Brown, laughing. Baptiste forms the heroic duo of the play with Brown, revealing the exteriority of Guillaume/William in relation to village society and designating him as the target of laughter, while welding around them the circle of laughers. The campaign party ends with music, dances and songs, from which Guillaume/William has excluded himself.
Petitclair holds together the linguistic variety displayed without any notion of fault. The one we laugh at is the Anglophone correcting others and convinced that he speaks the fashionable language well. The villagers express themselves in a colorful language with which they play, making rhyme “fanatic” with “catechism”, thus placing themselves, despite their accent and their lexicon, on the side of mastering the common language.
Apart from Guillaume/William, no one tries to take advantage of others by lowering their tongue. When Baptiste, a little dazed, makes what seem like mistakes, speaking of “politeness” instead of “politics”, of “elegance” instead of “eloquence”, Flore, far from reproaching him for his mistakes, reminds him rather in his gentle criticism of politicians and the notary. And some of his expressions, like “misantoupie” (for “misanthropy”), are not seen as faults, but as jokes.
In short, the French language is represented as a common property rather than as a tool of social differentiation: through it, membership in the group is sealed, beyond singular practices.
Contrary to the usual pattern of classical theater, in which the popular language is that of the servants, conversing mainly among themselves, the exchanges here go in all directions, without hierarchy. The manifestation of the social bond culminates during the final chorus, when everyone, except Guillaume/William, sings Has a clear fountain, then considered a national anthem. In the logic of the piece, this song must be rendered with a pleasing diversity of accents, which the reader likes to imagine.
Thus Petitclair developed the first conventions for transcribing the popular language of Quebec, without excluding even Brown’s broken French. Linguistic variety is posited as the foundation of the common language. Petitclair was followed in this direction by Hector Berthelot and his Ladbauche, by Gratien Gélinas and his Fridolin, by Michel Tremblay and his rich gallery of characters: all of them inhabit their language and share it by right, thus testifying to their presence in the world. Their enemy: he who, failing to inhabit his own language, only knows how to despise himself.