In: HeLix - Heidelberger Beiträge zur romanischen Literaturwissenschaft, 1 (2009), pp. 76-96.

Abstract

Contemporary Québecois literature has attracted little attention among German researchers to date. This is certainly true of Normand Chaurette’s plays, which are almost unknown in Germany, even though they are performed internationally, have been translated into several languages and have repeatedly garnered rave reviews and won awards. This article takes a thematic approach to Chaurette’s work, which has grown since 1976 into a corpus of over a dozen plays and novellas. The article’s central concern is an exploration of the interconnectedness of fundamental motifs – crime, death and madness. This analysis is carried out in light of the so-called cohérence fautive, and culminates by addressing an important aspect of Chaurette’s aesthetics: textual self-genesis.