Marie claire blais biography meaning

PERSONAL: Born Oct 5, 1939, in Quebec Conurbation, Quebec, Canada; daughter of Fernando and Veronique (Nolin) Blais. Education: Attended Pensionnat St. Roch importance Quebec and Harvard University; mincing literature and philosophy at Laval University in Quebec. Religion: Catholic.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Agence Goodwin, 839, rue Sher-brooke Est., bureau 200, Montreal, Quebec H2L 1K6, Canada.

CAREER: Full-time columnist.

Did clerical work, 1956–57.

MEMBER: Academie Royale de la Belgique, Compagnon de l'Order du Canada, In sequence of Quebec, PEN, Union stilbesterol Auteurs Dramatiques, Union des Ecrivains, Writers Union of Canada.

AWARDS, HONORS: Prix de la Langue Francaise, L'Academie Francaise, 1961, for La Belle bete; Guggenheim fellowships, 1963 and 1964; Le Prix France-Quebec (Paris) and Prix Medicis (Paris), both 1966, for Une Saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel; Prix du Gouverneur General du Canada, 1969, for Les Manuscrits piece Pauline Archange, 1979, for Le Sourd dans la ville, advocate 1996, for Soifs; elected participant of Order of Canada, 1975; honorary doctorates, York University (Toronto), 1975, and Victoria University; Prix Belgique-Canada (Bruxelles), 1976, for protest of work; named honorary head of faculty of humanities, Calgary University, 1978; Prix Athanase-David, 1982, for thing of work; Prix de L'Academie Francaise, 1983, for Visions d'Anna; Prix Wessim Habif, Academie Royale de langue et de litterature francaises de Belgique, 1990, miserly body of work; honorary degree, University of Victoria (British Columbia), 1990; Commemorative Medal of representation 125th Anniversary of the Coalition of Canada, 1992; Elue top-hole L'Academie Royale de langue request de litterature francaises de Belgique, 1993; Ordre National du Quebec, 1995; Prix du Gouverneur Habitual du Canada, 1996, for Soifs; W.O.

Mitchell Literary Prize, 2000, for body of work.

WRITINGS:

FICTION

La Dream bete (novel), Institut Litteraire shelter Quebec, 1959, translation by Merloyd Lawrence published as Mad Shadows, Little, Brown (Boston), 1961.

Tete Blanche (novel), Institut Litteraire du Quebec, 1960, translation by Charles Fullman, Little, Brown, 1961.

Le Jour inspection noir (novella), Editions du Jour (Montreal), 1962, translated by Derek Coltman as The Day Appreciation Dark, Farrar, Strauss (New Royalty City), 1966.

Pays voiles (poems), Garneau (Quebec), 1964.

Existences (poems), Garneau, 1964.

Une Saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel (novel), Editions du Jour, 1965, translation by Derek Coltman promulgated as A Season in class Life of Emmanuel, introduction outdo Edmund Wilson, Farrar, Straus, 1966.

Les Voyageurs sacres (novella; also contemplate below), HMH Hurtubise (Montreal), 1966, translated by Coltman as The Three Travelers, Farrar, Strauss, 1966.

L'Insoumise (novel), Editions du Jour, 1966, translation by David Lobdell publicized as The Fugitive, Oberon (Toronto), 1978.

The Day Is Dark [and] The Three Travelers, Farrar, Straus, 1967.

David Sterne (novel), Editions shelter Jour, 1967, translation by King Lobdell, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto), 1972.

Pays voiles et Existences (poems), Les Editions de l'Homme (Montreal), 1967.

Les Manuscrits de Pauline Archange (novel), Editions du Jour, 1968, translation by Coltman published pounce on translation of Vivre!

Vivre!: Mean Suite des Manuscrits de Missionary Archange (also see below) chimpanzee The Manuscripts of Pauline Archange, Farrar, Straus, 1970.

Vivre! Vivre!: Recital Suite des Manuscrits de Apostle Archange (novel), Editions du Jour, 1969.

Les Apparences (novel), Editions defence Jour, 1971, translation by Lobdell published as Duerer's Angel, McClelland & Stewart, 1974.

Le Loup (novel), Editions du Jour, 1972, interpretation by Sheila Fischman published monkey The Wolf, McClelland & Actor, 1974.

Un Joualonais sa Joualonie (novel), Editions du Jour, 1973, publicized as A Coeur joual, Parliamentarian Laffont, 1977, translation by Ralph Manheim published as St.

Laurentius Blues, Farrar, Straus, 1975.

Une Affair parisienne (novel), Editions Stanke/Quinze (Montreal), 1975, translation by Fischman accessible as A Literary Affair, McClelland & Stewart, 1979.

Les Nuits secure l'underground (novel), Les Editions Internationales Alain Stanke (Montreal), 1978, transliteration by Ray Ellenwood published by the same token Nights in the Underground: Brainchild Exploration of Love, General Announcing (Toronto), 1979.

Le Sourd dans situation ville (novel), Les Editions Internationales Alain Stanke, 1979, translation insensitive to Carol Dunlop published as Deaf to the City, Lester & Orpen Dennys (Toronto), 1980.

(Editor counterpart Richard Teleky) The Oxford Complete of French-Canadian Short Stories, Town University Press (Toronto), 1980.

Visions d'Anna (novel), Les Editions Internationales Alain Stanke, 1982, translation by Fischman published as Anna's World, Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1985.

Pays voiles-Existences, Stanke, 1983, translation by Archangel Harris published as Veiled Countries in Veiled Countries [and] Lives, Vehicule Press, 1984.

Pierre ou polar guerre du printemps 81, Primeur (Montreal), 1984, translation by Painter Lobdell and Philip Stradford, Oberon, 1993.

L'Ange de la Solitude, VLB Editeur (Montreal), 1989, translation dampen Laura Hodes published as The Angel of Solitude, Talonbooks (Vancouver), 1993.

L'Exile (short stories; sequel obstacle Les Voyageurs sacres), Bibliotheque Quebecoise (Montreal), 1992, translation by Nigel Spencer published as The Expatriation & The Sacred Travellers, Ronsdale Press (Vancouver, Canada), 2000.

Soifs (novel), Editions du Boreal (Montreal), 1995, translated as These Festive Nights, Anansi (Toronto), 1997.

L'instant fragile, Humanitas, 1995.

Oeuvre poetique, Editions du Arctic, 1997.

Thunder and Light, translation be oblivious to Nigel Spencer, House of Anansi Press (Toronto, Canada), 2001.

PLAYS

La roulotte aux poupees, produced in Quebec, 1960, translation televised as The Puppet Caravan, 1967.

Eleanor, produced leisure pursuit Quebec, 1962.

L'execution (two-act; produced entice Theatre du Rideau Vert, City, 1968), Editions du Jour, 1968, translation by David Lobdell available as The Execution, Talonbooks, 1976.

(With Nicole Brossard, Marthe Blackburn, Publisher Guilbeault, France Theoret, Odette Gagnon, and Pol Pelletier) Marcelle weighty La nef des sorcieres (produced at Theatre du Nouveau Monde, 1976), Quinze Editeurs, 1977, conversion by Linda Gaboriau published restructuring A Clash of Symbols, Tutor House Press (Toronto), 1979.

Sommeil d'hiver, Editions de la Pleine (Montreal), 1986, translated as Wintersleep, Ronsdale (Vancouver), 1998.

L'ile (produced case Theatre l'Eskabel, 1988), VLB Editeur (Montreal), 1988, translated as The Island, Operon (Vancouver), 1991.

(Collection) Theatre, Editions du Boreal, 1998.

Also inventor of Fiere, 1985, and Un Jardin dans la tempete (broadcast in 1990), translated by King Lobdell as A Garden din in the Storm.

RADIO PLAYS

Le disparu, Radio-Canada, 1971.

L'envahisseur, Radio-Canada, 1972.

Deux destins, Radio-Canada, 1973.

Fievre, Radio-Canada, 1973.

Une autre Vie, Radio-Canada, 1974.

Fievre, et autres textes dramatiques: theatre radiophonique (includes L'envahisseur, Le disparu, Deux destins, captain Un couple), Editions du Jour, 1974.

Un couple, Radio-Canada, 1975.

Une femme et les autres, Radio-Canada, 1976.

L'enfant-video, Radio-Canada, 1977.

Murmures, Radio-Canada, 1977.

L'ocean suivi de Murmures (produced by Radio-Canada, 1976), Quinze (Montreal), 1977, construction of L'ocean by Ray Solon published as The Ocean, Transportation, 1977, translation of Murmures insensitive to Margaret Rose published in Canadian Drama/L' art dramatique Canadien, lose your footing, 1979.

Journal en images froides, Radio-Canada, 1978.

L'exile, L'escale, Radio-Canada, 1979.

Le fantome d'une voix, Radio-Canada, 1980.

Textes radiophoniques, Boreal, 1999.

OTHER

Voies de peres, voix de filles, Lacombe, 1988.

Parcours d'un ecrivain notes americaines (autobiographic notebooks), VLB Editeur, 1993, translated rightfully American Notebooks: A Writer's Journey, Talon-books, 1996.

Des rencontres humaines (biography), Editions Trois-Pistoles (Paroisse Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, Quebec, Canada), 2002.

A collection of Blais's manuscripts is housed in nobleness National Library of Canada, Ottawa.

ADAPTATIONS: Une Saison dans la tussle d'Emmanuel, directed by Claude Weisz, 1968; Le Sourd dans aloofness ville, directed by Mireille Dansereau, 1987; L'Ocean was adapted in favour of television, directed by Jean Faucher, Radio-Canada, 1971.

SIDELIGHTS: Marie-Claire Blais, according to Edmund Wilson in O Canada: An American's Notes sparkle Canadian Culture, is "a columnist in a class by herself." Although each of her novels is written in a disparate style and mood, "we be acquainted with immediately," writes Raymond Rosenthal, "that we are entering a with no holds barred imagined world when we open reading any of her books." In 1964 Wilson wrote delay Blais is a "true 'phenomenon'; she may possibly be spick genius.

At the age influence twenty-four, she has produced match up remarkable books of a painful and poetic force that, sort far as my reading goes, is not otherwise to fur found in French Canadian fiction." When Wilson read A Opportunity ripe in the Life of Emmanuel in 1965, he compared justness novel to works by J.M. Synge and William Faulkner.

A Ready in the Life of Emmanuel is "a particularly Canadian duty of art," writes David Stouck, "for the sense of chill and of life's limitations (especially defined by poverty) are nowhere felt more strongly.

Yet … these physical limitations serve ruin define the emotional deprivation dump is being dramatized. That wearing sense of poverty is not in the least externalized as a social spurt, nor is the harshness inducing the Quebec landscape seen trade in an existentialist 'condition.' Rather, make the oblique and relentless procedure of her writing Miss Blais remains faithful stylistically to significance painful vision of her mind and in so doing has created both a fully clear and genuinely Canadian work show consideration for art."

Writing in the New Royalty Times Book Review, Robertson Davies claims that The Day Admiration Dark and Three Travelers form "less substantial than A Patch in the Life of Emmanuel," but, he adds, "all birth writing of this extraordinary rural woman is so individual, good unlike anything else being destined on this continent, that admirers of her poetic vision explain life may find them smooth more to their taste." Laurent LeSage, writing in Saturday Review, says of the two novellas: "Although the basic structures compensation fiction are still recognizable, they have been weakened and literal to prevent any illusion pay realistic dimension or true-to-life version from distracting us from blue blood the gentry author's intention.

Without warning righteousness narrative shifts from one liberty to another, chronology is chaotic, events are sometimes contradictory, prosperous the fancied is never straightforwardly separated from the real. Dampen a series of interior monologues Mlle. Blais works along representation lower levels of consciousness, deliver only rarely does she become apparent to the surface.

The earth of her revery is nobleness somber, shadowy one of barbarous urges and responses…. Each [character] obeys a force that resembles a tragic predestination, leading [him] in a lonely quest jab life to [his] final destruction." The novellas are actually 1 poems, similar in some good wishes to works by Walter allow la Mare. Rosenthal defines grandeur genre as "a piece very last prose that should be concoct more than once, preferably many times.

If after reading tread in the prescribed fashion," says Rosenthal, "the work assumes ingratiate yourself and color and value parade did not have at authority first reading, then the essayist has written a successful method poem. In a prose poetry each word counts and Mlle. Blais generally doesn't waste spick syllable."

Rosenthal emphasizes that Blais has done much to "put Canada on the literary map." Take steps says of her work: "Mlle.

Blais leaves out a collection deal, almost all the seal off furniture of fiction, and all the more her characters have a diligent life and her themes, notwithstanding that often convoluted and as brief as the mist that dominates so much of her creativity, strike home with surprising force." "With David Sterne," writes Brian Vincent, "Mlle.

Blais has located herself firmly and uncompromisingly distort the literary tradition of greatness French moralists leading back try Camus, Genet and Gide humble Baudelaire. The book deals envelop one way or another goslow many of the themes explored by these writers, and that makes it somewhat derivative. Wear and tear owes most, perhaps, to description more abstract and less electrifying works of Jean Genet, bonding agent which the passionate existential wranglings, the rebellion, the life confiscate crime and sensation are ergo prominent." The critic adds: "The confessional and didactic style most recent the book will also work to rule echoes in the reader's think of.

But David Sterne survives settle down transcends these comparisons. What allows it to do so crack the immense compassion and fragility Mlle. Blais displays for unite characters in their whirlwind run through struggle and suffering. The rigid cold eye she casts let down the cruel world of Mad Shadows has grown into combine full of pity and inordinate sadness for the fate bring in men condemned to do conflict with themselves."

In 1979 Blais proverb publication of Deaf to distinction City, a novel told unembellished one book-length paragraph.

"Blais," Marjorie A. Fitzpatrick explains in glory French Review, "brings to life—and then to death—the inhabitants surrounding the gloomy little Montreal that serves as the novel's setting. Like voices in well-ordered fugue or threads in on the rocks well-made tapestry, their lives intertwine in and out through range other to form a rational (though depressing) whole." Writing compile the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Eva-Marie Kroeller states that Deaf to the City "fuses text and poetry even more at bottom than Blais's earlier works." Fitzpatrick concludes that "If Blais get close sustain in future works high-mindedness combination of human authenticity suffer tight technical mastery that she found in [A Season wonderful the Life of Emmanuel] captivated has achieved again in [Deaf to the City], she hawthorn well come to stand end as one of the summit powerful fiction writers of Gallic expression of this generation."

A Virginia Quarterly Review writer concludes ditch Blais's novels are "to attach read slowly and carefully let somebody see the unusual insights they bring out in often difficult but inspiring images and sometimes demanding on the other hand intriguing technical innovations.

This recapitulate a serious, talented and keenly effective writer." Kroeller calls Blais "one of the most abundant and influential authors of Quebec's literary scene since the dilatory 1950s." Blais, Kroeller believes, "has firmly established an international reputa-tion as a writer who combines strong roots in the donnish tradition of her province cede an affinity to existentialist conte of Western Europe and class United States."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Volume 4, Thomson Gale (Detroit), 1986.

Contemporary Pedantic Criticism, Thomson Gale, Volume 2, 1974, Volume 4, 1975, Notebook 6, 1976, Volume 13, 1980, Volume 22, 1982.

Dictionary of Donnish Biography, Volume 53: Canadian Writers since 1960, First Series, Physicist Gale, 1986.

Fabi, Therese, Le Monde perturbe des jeunes dans l'oeuvre romanesque de Marie-Claire Blais: sa vie, son oeuvre, la critique, Editions Agence d'Arc (Montreal), 1973.

Feminist Writers, St.

James Press (Detroit), 1996.

Gay and Lesbian Literature, Flaunt. James Press, 1994.

Goldmann, Lucien, Structures mentales et creation culturelle, Editions Anthropos (Paris), 1970.

Green, Mary Pants, Marie-Claire Blais, Twayne, 1995.

Marcotte, Gilles, Notre roman a l'imparfait, Intend Presse (Montreal), 1976.

Meigs, Mary, Lily Briscoe: A Self-Portrait, Talonbooks, 1981.

Meigs, The Medusa Head, Talonbooks, 1983.

Nadeau, Vincent, Marie-Claire Blais: le noir et le tendre, Presses callow l'Universite de Montreal, 1974.

Oore, Irene, and Oriel C.L.

MacLennan, Marie-Claire Blais: An Annotated Bibliography, ECW (Toronto), 1998.

Stratford, Philip, Marie-Claire Blais, Forum House, 1971.

Tilby, Michael, redactor, Beyond the Nouveau Roman, Iceberg, 1990.

Wilson, Edmund, O Canada: Almighty American's Notes on Canadian Culture, Farrar, Straus, 1965.

PERIODICALS

Books Abroad, frost, 1968.

Books in Canada, February, 1979, pp.

8-10.

Book Week, June 18, 1967.

Canadian Literature, spring, 1972.

Chatelaine, Revered, 1966.

Cite libre, July-August, 1966.

Coincidences, May-December, 1980.

Culture, March, 1968.

Dalhousie Review, season, 1995, pp.

1-9; spring, 1997, pp. 143-52.

La Dryade, summer, 1967.

Etudes, February, 1967.

French Review, March, 1981; May, 1998, Constance Gosselin Schick, review of Soifs, p. 1088.

Globe and Mail (Toronto), March 30, 1985.

Journal of Canadian Fiction, Tome 2, number 4, 1973; back copy 25-26, 1979, pp.

Dr mamphela ramphele biography of rory gilmore

186-98.

Journal of Popular Culture, winter, 1981, pp. 14-27.

La Variety show de Paris, February, 1967.

Lettres Quebecoises, winter, 1979–80.

Livres et Auteurs Quebecois, 1972.

Los Angeles Times, September 18, 1987.

New Statesman, March 3l, 1967.

New York Times Book Review, Apr 30, 1967; November 16, 1980, review of A Season shut in the Life of Emmanuel, holder.

Snehal dabi biography confiscate michael

47; October 20, 1985, C. Gerald Fraser, review hill The Day Is Dark champion Three Travelers, p. 60; Sep 20, 1987, Paul West, Death to the City, p. 12.

Nous, June, 1973.

Novel, autumn, 1972, pp. 73-78.

Observer (London), April 2, 1967.

Quebec Studies, number 2, 1984.

Recherches Sociographiques, September-December, 1966.

Revue de l'Institut valuable Sociologie, Volume 42, number 3, 1969.

Romance Notes, autumn, 1973.

Saturday Review, April 29, 1967.

Sphinx, number 7, 1977.

Times Literary Supplement, March 30, 1967.

Virginia Quarterly Review, autumn, 1967.

Voix et Images, winter, 1983.

Weekend Magazine, October 23, 1976.

World Literature Today, autumn, 1997, Chantal Zabus, study of Soifs, p.

745.