From Personalism to Decolonization: Gaston Miron between French Canada and Québec. (December 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Palmieri, David
• Is Part Of: Québec studies. Volume 60(2015)
• Page Start: 125
• Page End: 152
• Publication Date: 2015-12
• Subjects: Québec (Province) -- Civilization -- Periodicals; French-Canadian literature -- Québec (Province) -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Littérature canadienne-française -- Québec (Province) -- Histoire et critique -- Périodiques; Québec (Province) -- Civilisation -- Périodiques; Civilization; French-Canadian literature; Québec; Criticism, interpretation, etc; Periodicals; 971.4005
• DOI: 10.3828/qs.2015.20
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0737-3759

Abstract

Abstract : The poetry and life of Gaston Miron continue to influence Québec literary and popular culture. His transformation from Catholic brother and teacher in training in 1945 to leftist poet and activist in 1965 is emblematic of the changes of Québec society in this period. What intellectual experiences led Miron to transcend the traditional Catholic culture of Québec to become a fully realized poet and public intellectual? Whereas his talented predecessors Émile Nelligan and Saint-Denys Garneau failed to overcome the alienation and defensiveness of traditional French-Canadian identity and remain troubling figures, Miron was the first poet to understand, confront, and make art from his minority condition. His consciousness was shaped between 1947 and 1953 by two expressions of French Catholic humanism, Emmanuel Mounier's personalism and Gabriel Marcel's Christian existentialism. After 1957, Miron was transformed in large part by his reading of authors and philosophies important to the West's secular tradition, Karl Marx's communism, Jean-Paul Sartre's atheist existentialism, Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis, and Albert Memmi's decolonization. This essay analyzes Miron's intellectual metamorphosis from personalist to decolonist in three phases, concluding with a tentative portrayal of the mysterious period between 1953 and 1957 when the new road was taken and today's "Québécois" identity took form.