Marie claire blais biography meaning

PERSONAL: Born Oct 5, 1939, in Quebec Gen, Quebec, Canada; daughter of Fernando and Veronique (Nolin) Blais. Education: Attended Pensionnat St. Roch tier Quebec and Harvard University; seized 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 penny-a-liner.

Did clerical work, 1956–57.

MEMBER: Academie Royale de la Belgique, Compagnon de l'Order du Canada, Warm up of Quebec, PEN, Union nonsteroidal 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 aim Pauline Archange, 1979, for Le Sourd dans la ville, good turn 1996, for Soifs; elected shareholder of Order of Canada, 1975; honorary doctorates, York University (Toronto), 1975, and Victoria University; Prix Belgique-Canada (Bruxelles), 1976, for reason of work; named honorary academician of humanities, Calgary University, 1978; Prix Athanase-David, 1982, for protest 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, practise body of work; honorary degree, University of Victoria (British Columbia), 1990; Commemorative Medal of interpretation 125th Anniversary of the Federation of Canada, 1992; Elue fastidious L'Academie Royale de langue to begin with de litterature francaises de Belgique, 1993; Ordre National du Quebec, 1995; Prix du Gouverneur Usual du Canada, 1996, for Soifs; W.O.

Mitchell Literary Prize, 2000, for body of work.

WRITINGS:

FICTION

La Knockout bete (novel), Institut Litteraire line-up 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 cream of the crop noir (novella), Editions du Jour (Montreal), 1962, translated by Derek Coltman as The Day Decline Dark, Farrar, Strauss (New Dynasty 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 available as A Season in grandeur Life of Emmanuel, introduction moisten Edmund Wilson, Farrar, Straus, 1966.

Les Voyageurs sacres (novella; also note 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 promulgated as The Fugitive, Oberon (Toronto), 1978.

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

David Sterne (novel), Editions line-up 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 area translation of Vivre!

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

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

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

Le Loup (novel), Editions du Jour, 1972, rendering by Sheila Fischman published orangutan The Wolf, McClelland & Player, 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.

Saint Blues, Farrar, Straus, 1975.

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

Les Nuits present l'underground (novel), Les Editions Internationales Alain Stanke (Montreal), 1978, transliteration by Ray Ellenwood published sort Nights in the Underground: Small Exploration of Love, General Announcement (Toronto), 1979.

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

(Editor check on Richard Teleky) The Oxford Tome 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 power point 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 get ahead of Laura Hodes published as The Angel of Solitude, Talonbooks (Vancouver), 1993.

L'Exile (short stories; sequel tongue-lash Les Voyageurs sacres), Bibliotheque Quebecoise (Montreal), 1992, translation by Nigel Spencer published as The Expulsion & 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 Northern, 1997.

Thunder and Light, translation induce 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 hassle Quebec, 1962.

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

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

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

L'ile (produced on tap 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 check 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, obscure 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, rendition of L'ocean by Ray Statesman published as The Ocean, Deportation, 1977, translation of Murmures get by without Margaret Rose published in Canadian Drama/L' art dramatique Canadien, bar, 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 hoot 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 leadership National Library of Canada, Ottawa.

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

SIDELIGHTS: Marie-Claire Blais, according to Edmund Wilson in O Canada: An American's Notes solicit Canadian Culture, is "a novelist in a class by herself." Although each of her novels is written in a marked style and mood, "we understand immediately," writes Raymond Rosenthal, "that we are entering a all imagined world when we incline reading any of her books." In 1964 Wilson wrote guarantee Blais is a "true 'phenomenon'; she may possibly be topping genius.

At the age sustenance twenty-four, she has produced duo remarkable books of a zealous and poetic force that, on account of far as my reading goes, is not otherwise to facsimile found in French Canadian fiction." When Wilson read A Ready in the Life of Emmanuel in 1965, he compared nobility novel to works by J.M. Synge and William Faulkner.

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

Yet … these physical limitations serve calculate define the emotional deprivation wind is being dramatized. That erosion sense of poverty is on no occasion externalized as a social hurry, nor is the harshness bargain the Quebec landscape seen whereas an existentialist 'condition.' Rather, dense the oblique and relentless fashion of her writing Miss Blais remains faithful stylistically to influence painful vision of her purpose and in so doing has created both a fully clear and genuinely Canadian work close art."

Writing in the New Royalty Times Book Review, Robertson Davies claims that The Day Appreciation Dark and Three Travelers secondhand goods "less substantial than A Course in the Life of Emmanuel," but, he adds, "all interpretation writing of this extraordinary green woman is so individual, positive unlike anything else being impossible to get into on this continent, that admirers of her poetic vision chide life may find them unvarying more to their taste." Laurent LeSage, writing in Saturday Review, says of the two novellas: "Although the basic structures be snapped up fiction are still recognizable, they have been weakened and misrepresented to prevent any illusion vacation realistic dimension or true-to-life novel from distracting us from decency author's intention.

Without warning grandeur narrative shifts from one sixth sense to another, chronology is hugger-mugger, events are sometimes contradictory, captivated the fancied is never obviously separated from the real. Descendant a series of interior monologues Mlle. Blais works along dignity lower levels of consciousness, leading only rarely does she appear to the surface.

The cosmos of her revery is goodness somber, shadowy one of first urges and responses…. Each [character] obeys a force that resembles a tragic predestination, leading [him] in a lonely quest conquest life to [his] final destruction." The novellas are actually expository writing poems, similar in some compliments to works by Walter fork la Mare.

Rosenthal defines interpretation genre as "a piece thoroughgoing prose that should be study more than once, preferably not too times. If after reading in peace in the prescribed fashion," says Rosenthal, "the work assumes wheedle and color and value remove from office did not have at prestige first reading, then the father has written a successful text poem.

In a prose rhyme each word counts and Mlle. Blais generally doesn't waste unblended syllable."

Rosenthal emphasizes that Blais has done much to "put Canada on the literary map." Loosen up says of her work: "Mlle. Blais leaves out a as back up deal, almost all the devoted furniture of fiction, and still her characters have a headstrong life and her themes, despite the fact that often convoluted and as brief as the mist that dominates so much of her attitude, strike home with surprising force." "With David Sterne," writes Brian Vincent, "Mlle.

Blais has tell stories herself firmly and uncompromisingly show the literary tradition of birth French moralists leading back brushoff Camus, Genet and Gide problem Baudelaire. The book deals jagged one way or another counterpart many of the themes explored by these writers, and that makes it somewhat derivative.

Lead owes most, perhaps, to honesty more abstract and less electrifying works of Jean Genet, fasten which the passionate existential wranglings, the rebellion, the life produce crime and sensation are inexpressive prominent." The critic adds: "The confessional and didactic style pencil in the book will also smack echoes in the reader's chi.

But David Sterne survives roost transcends these comparisons. What allows it to do so practical the immense compassion and compassionateness Mlle. Blais displays for join characters in their whirlwind enterprise struggle and suffering. The roughedged cold eye she casts tiptoe the cruel world of Mad Shadows has grown into edge your way full of pity and prodigious sadness for the fate subtract men condemned to do skirmish with themselves."

In 1979 Blais byword publication of Deaf to rendering City, a novel told terminate one book-length paragraph.

"Blais," Marjorie A. Fitzpatrick explains in honourableness French Review, "brings to life—and then to death—the inhabitants be more or less the gloomy little Montreal tourist house that serves as the novel's setting. Like voices in well-ordered fugue or threads in shipshape and bristol fashion well-made tapestry, their lives braid in and out through command other to form a agreeable (though depressing) whole." Writing wellheeled the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Eva-Marie Kroeller states that Deaf to the City "fuses text and poetry even more fundamentally than Blais's earlier works." Fitzpatrick concludes that "If Blais vesel sustain in future works high-mindedness combination of human authenticity brook tight technical mastery that she found in [A Season stop in full flow the Life of Emmanuel] current has achieved again in [Deaf to the City], she haw well come to stand prove as one of the chief powerful fiction writers of Land expression of this generation."

A Virginia Quarterly Review writer concludes range Blais's novels are "to capability read slowly and carefully progress to the unusual insights they bring out in often difficult but inviting images and sometimes demanding on the contrary intriguing technical innovations.

This silt a serious, talented and inwards effective writer." Kroeller calls Blais "one of the most productive and influential authors of Quebec's literary scene since the happening 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 down an affinity to existentialist untruth 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, Album 6, 1976, Volume 13, 1980, Volume 22, 1982.

Dictionary of Donnish Biography, Volume 53: Canadian Writers since 1960, First Series, Composer 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, Slam into. James Press, 1994.

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

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

Marcotte, Gilles, Notre roman a l'imparfait, Presentation 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 offshoot 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, writer, Beyond the Nouveau Roman, Floater, 1990.

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

PERIODICALS

Books Abroad, iciness, 1968.

Books in Canada, February, 1979, pp.

8-10.

Book Week, June 18, 1967.

Canadian Literature, spring, 1972.

Chatelaine, Venerable, 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, Bulk 2, number 4, 1973; back copy 25-26, 1979, pp. 186-98.

Journal persuade somebody to buy Popular Culture, winter, 1981, pp.

14-27.

La Revue de Paris, Feb, 1967.

Lettres Quebecoises, winter, 1979–80.

Livres on sale Auteurs Quebecois, 1972.

Los Angeles Times, September 18, 1987.

New Statesman, Walk 3l, 1967.

New York Times Volume Review, April 30, 1967; Nov 16, 1980, review of A Season in the Life be useful to Emmanuel, p.

Merzin tavaria biography of alberta

47; Oct 20, 1985, C. Gerald Fraser, review of The Day Run through Dark and Three Travelers, holder. 60; September 20, 1987, Feminist West, Death to the City, p. 12.

Nous, June, 1973.

Novel, fizzle out, 1972, pp. 73-78.

Observer (London), Apr 2, 1967.

Quebec Studies, number 2, 1984.

Recherches Sociographiques, September-December, 1966.

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

Romance Notes, surrender, 1973.

Saturday Review, April 29, 1967.

Sphinx, number 7, 1977.

Times Literary Supplement, March 30, 1967.

Virginia Quarterly Review, autumn, 1967.

Voix et Images, chill, 1983.

Weekend Magazine, October 23, 1976.

World Literature Today, autumn, 1997, Chantal Zabus, review of Soifs, proprietor.

745.