Le fabuliste La Fontaine à Montréal

Title

en_US Le fabuliste La Fontaine à Montréal

en_US Collection du Zodiaque '35

Description

en_US Language note: French

en_US Inscribed by the author

en_US Robert Choquette

Creator

en_US Choquette, Robert

Date

2016-01-25T20:12:05Z

en_US 2007-03

en_US 1935

Date Available

2016-01-25T20:12:05Z

Date Issued

en_US 1935

Abstract

en_US What one finds in this surprising, fragile paperback from1935 is fifteen radio dramas based each on a fable of La Fontaine. The author begins his Avertissement with this surprising statement: Ces croquis à main levée n'ont pas le prétention d'être de la littérature. I was lucky enough to find an article in English, Choquette's urban fables: questioning a certain modernity, by Emile J. Talbot, Quebec Studies, Fall-Winter, 2002. I can best suggest what is here by quoting a key passage from that article. Each of the fifteen sketches of 'Le fabuliste La Fontaine a Montreal' bears the same title as a fable from La Fontaine whose text directly precedes it, thereby inviting its listeners/readers to expect that Choquette's brief dramatic sketch will illustrate or expand on La Fontaine's observations on the human behavior depicted. And, to a large extent, this expectation is met as Choquette, under the guise of a literary game that consists in applying La Fontaine to the thirties, targets the upper bourgeoisie of francophone Montreal, just as his French model frequently critiqued the mores of the royal court and the aristocracy. An anonymous reviewer in 1935 called them 'fables a rebours,' that is, representations of situations that La Fontaine, were he living in Montreal, could draw upon. Yet, Choquette's dialogues are not mere updatings of La Fontaine, a transfer of his tales into modern times. While their intertextual links with their La Fontainian hypotexts obtain as much in their pragmatic scope as they do at the formal and thematic level, the seventeenth-century fables are not needed to illustrate, give meaning to, or reinforce Choquette's own tales, which could easily stand on their own. Rather, their prefatory presence has the purpose of legitimizing Choquette's enterprise, reminding his radio audience that he is using the same indirect approach as La Fontaine and with a similar intent, that of reproving current behavior by allusion and reference.

Identifier

en_US 7876 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/83127

Language

en_US fre

Publisher

en_US Editions du Zodiaque

en_US Montréal

Subject

en_US PQ3919.C467 F3 1935

en_US Jean de La Fontaine; Robert Choquette

en_US Title Page Scanned

Type

en_US Book, Whole