Poésie et ironie chez Jean-Aubert Loranger, Saint-Denys Garneau, Roland Giguère et Jacques Brault

This dissertation deals with irony in twentieth-century Québécois literature, more specifically in the works of Jean-Aubert Loranger, Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau, Roland Giguère, and Jacques Brault. Although it is clear that the patriotic imperatives of French-Canadian romanticism favoured a form of lyricism that enhanced the epic material, this dissertation aims to show that Québécois poetry also includes another romanticism, best understood through irony. The irony in question is not rhetorical; rather it derives from German romantic philosophy in the sense that it defines itself less as a figure of speech than as a mode of understanding the world through astonishment and scepticism. This double pull – toward astonishment and toward scepticism – is precisely what the poems of Loranger, Saint-Denys Garneau, Giguère, and Brault explore. In accordance with the Greek etymon eîron (the one who questions), the irony they use questions obvious facts and established values, starting with those related to poetry itself. By adopting a self-reflexive position and by turning to other forms like the tale and the fable, both subject to playfulness, humour and levity, the writers always keep a distance from poetry. But poetry is not the sole target of their irony. It also aims at reality and the clichés that make reality artificial. It is, in addition, directed at the poet himself and the poetic “I”, both perceived as suspicious constructions. Nevertheless, their irony subtly displays a certain tenderness towards what it derides. Thus, its detachment does not give way to any feeling of disgust or bitterness.This dissertation is divided into five chapters. The first one intends, in an introductory way, to reread romanticism by focusing on the critical spirit of poetry, which takes the form of a metaphysical irony. This specific type of irony is what is closely examined in the next four chapters, dedicated respectively to the works of Loranger, Garneau, Giguère, and Brault. Such a chronological structure highlights the overall coherence of the corpus; it also sheds light on a spirit of levity and an ethics of distance that play a decisive role in the Québécois poetic modernity.

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