Opinion: Literary anglophobia
In his opinion piece “What we can learn from literature” (June 7), Julius Grey lists many classic Quebec novels that he values and then says: “Several years ago, William Johnson did a disservice to Quebec literature by publishing a book dedicated to proving its xenophobic and ultra-nationalist nature.” (Grey did not name my book, which was published in French in 1991. It was called Anglophobie made in Québec.)
Grey asserts, without quotation or analysis: “Nothing could be further from the truth … Most of the [Quebec] classics express universal values. Describing them as anti-English, or refusing to see any justification for their affirmation of French Canada, is nothing short of perverse.”
I don’t know what credentials Grey claims. I studied for seven years at Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf, obtained an MA in French literature while studying under Ernest Gagnon, the expert on Quebec’s literature, and wrote a 480-page book in which I surveyed Quebec’s literature from the 1840s to 1990, with thousands of quotations. Grey rhymes off 16 titles and a few more authors’ names, but without genuine analysis or a single quotation. We get only affirmations.
In his opinion piece “What we can learn from literature” (June 7), Julius Grey lists many classic Quebec novels that he values and then says: “Several years ago, William Johnson did a disservice to Quebec literature by publishing a book dedicated to proving its xenophobic and ultra-nationalist nature.” (Grey did not name my book, which was published in French in 1991. It was called Anglophobie made in Québec.)
Grey asserts, without quotation or analysis: “Nothing could be further from the truth … Most of the [Quebec] classics express universal values. Describing them as anti-English, or refusing to see any justification for their affirmation of French Canada, is nothing short of perverse.”
I don’t know what credentials Grey claims. I studied for seven years at Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf, obtained an MA in French literature while studying under Ernest Gagnon, the expert on Quebec’s literature, and wrote a 480-page book in which I surveyed Quebec’s literature from the 1840s to 1990, with thousands of quotations. Grey rhymes off 16 titles and a few more authors’ names, but without genuine analysis or a single quotation. We get only affirmations.
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