Laflèche Guy

Biography

The Little Manual of Literary Studies (for a general science of literature) (Montreal, VLB, 1977), manifested in the form of a pamphlet, will have been the starting point of a teaching and a research whose primary aim is scientific rigor. It was the culmination of Guy Laflèche's doctoral dissertation on Stéphane Mallarmé's Indian Tales : Mallarmé: Generative Grammar of "Indian Tales"(University of Montreal Press, 1975). In this work, the tales of Mallarme and those of Mary Summer which served as its "raw material" are systematically studied from all the immediate (or immanent) points of view of literary studies, from the stylistic to the thematic analysis, taking advantage computer support, lexical statistics, models of generative grammar, in short the various practices of the structural analysis of the literary text. At the end of this work, Guy Laflèche characterized poetic language as a third articulation of language (in phonemes, lexemes and themes). Narrative study has been the focus of Guy Laflèche's teaching for more than twenty years. These courses are given at the baccalaureate level and in a seminar of Graduate Studies, where students collaborate on this work by dealing with specific issues. Over the years, this research has produced a large number of educational documents, a first synthesis of which has just taken the form of a manual:Materials for a Narrative Grammar (Laval, Singulier, 1999, 178 p.). The horizon of this work is to make the story of Western narrative. It is in the analysis and critical edition of the works of New France that Guy Laflèche most often applied his theoretical research, on texts located on the border of the literary work and the ethnographic document. A first narrative study is at the head of the critical edition of the Relation of 1634 ( The Missionary, the apostate, the sorcerer, University of Montreal Press, 1973). The study of the texts relating to the holy Canadian Martyrs (Laval, Singulier, 1988-1995) forms a series of six volumes, the first five of which make the critical edition of the Life of Jogues (1647) by Jérôme Lalemant and Relations of 1649 and from 1650 (the martyrdom of Brébeuf and that of Garnier) by Paul Ragueneau, before telling the story (the "martyrdom"!) of the Hurons of Quebec, from 1650 to their fight at Long-Sault in 1660, with Dollard des Ormeaux, which they guided to Radisson's fur convoy then to the Great Lakes. The second major work undertaken since 1995 consists in studying the sources, genesis and rewritings of the writings of the New France Recollects, Voyage (1632) and Histoire (1636) by Gabriel Sagard to the synthesis of Valentin Leroux falsely attributed to Chrestien LeClercq ( First Establishment of the Faith in New France , 1691). It is in these perspectives that are rarely applied to works in New France that Guy Laflèche directs his master's and PhD students.

Research Interest

literature studies and writing, Historical and uchronic narrations.