New Historical Space in Anne Hébert's Le Premier jardin

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1. “There are times when the surplus of memory finally makes one believe in the end of things, drying up hope instead of generating it, and weakening the individual and collective capacity to project oneself into the future. To some extent, this is the situation now in Québec. It is wrong to think that people in general, young people in particular—I am talking here about Québeckers of French--Canadian heritage—are ignorant of their history. On the contrary, they know it quite well, in the sense that they have grasped the central principle and the main framework of one narrative of Québec and Québeckers, namely the one of a people with a tragic destiny, a people that was for a long time backward, oppressed by the clergy and by the English, and that has succeeded in part in averting the terrible fate looming over it by re-founding itself through the Quiet Revolution, a great collective move forward.”