Gérard Bessette


Gérard Bessette was a Canadian writer and educator.

Life and career

Bessette was born in Sainte-Anne-de-Sabrevois, Quebec, and grew up in Montreal. He attended the Collège Saint-Ignace. He continued his studies at the Université de Montréal, where in 1950 he completed his doctorate. His doctoral thesis was published in 1960 as Images in French-Canadian Poetry.
Unable to obtain an academic position in Quebec because of his atheism, he taught at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh from 1951 to 1957. He then found a job in Kingston, Ontario, first at Royal Military College of Canada in 1958, and then in the Department of French Studies at Queen's University from 1959 to 1979.

Writing

When he was 28, his early poem "Le Coureur" was selected to compete in the "Literature, Lyric Works" subcategory of the art competition at the 1948 Summer Olympics.
Several of Bessette's works address issues that led to and were representative of the Quiet Revolution, a series of societal shifts that took place in Quebec during the 1960s, which saw increased secularization and a general movement away from the influence of the Catholic Church. His literary criticism is noted for its Freudian readings of Quebec literature.
One of his most famous novels is Not for Every Eye, an existential tale of a book store employee in a small Quebec town in the 1950s. The book deals with one of Bessette's most common themes: the stifling culture of Quebec of that time.
In the 1960s he was influenced by the Nouveau Roman literary movement. His novels became increasingly experimental, drawing comparisons to Claude Simon, one of his favourite writers. L'Incubation and Le Cycle both won the Governor General's Award for French-language fiction. In 1980 he was awarded the Prix Athanase-David, Quebec's highest literary honour.
He died in Kingston, Ontario, on 21 February 2005.

Novels

  • La Bagarre. The Brawl, trans. Marc Lebel and Ronald Sutherland
  • Le Libraire. Not for Every Eye, trans. Glen Shortliffe ; translation later revised by Steven Urquhart
  • Les Pédagogues
  • L'Incubation. Incubation, trans. Glen Shortliffe
  • Le Cycle. The Cycle, trans. A.D. Martin-Sperry
  • La Commensale
  • Les Anthropoïdes
  • Le Semestre
  • ''Les Dires d'Omer Marin''

Essays

Les Images en poésie canadienne-française Une littérature en ébullition Histoire de la littérature canadienne-française par les textes : des origines à nos jours De Québec à Saint-Boniface Trois romanciers québécois : Victor-Lévy Beaulieu, André Langevin, Gabrielle Roy
  • ''Mes romans et moi''

Other

Poèmes temporels
  • ''La Garden-party de Christophine''

Awards and honours