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Pervier, Linda

Romance Languages

2007

MA

Canuck, a novella written, by a turn-of-the-20th-century French-Canadian émigrée, Camille Lessard, is an account of the immigrant experience of the era. Though a fictive romance in many ways, parts of the story achieve an uncommon degree of realism in describing both Canadian and Franco-American life of the period. It is significant both because of the scarcity of such records from the Franco-American perspective and because of the author's authentic working-class background. Translating the story into English offers an opportunity to survey Franco-American fiction of the time, especially the role of French-language newspapers, and to compare Canuck with the only other Franco-American novel which can be said to be as important: Jeanne la fileuse: épisode de l'émigration franco-canadienne aux États-Unis, by Honoré Beaugrand. The two works treat a phenomenon critical to the exploration of two cultures in the northeastern North American region. The current study provides brief biographies of Lessard and Beaugrand and a comparison of their approaches, styles and content as well as elucidating notes on the translation of Canuck.