What is Québécois Literature?

Book excerpt: The question 'What is Québécois literature?' might seem innocent and easily answerable. But as Rosemary Chapman shows in this compelling study, answering that question requires no less than the charting of the entire cultural history of French Canada, the contextualizing of francophone writing in Canada within postcolonialism, and the challenging of literary history to rethink its nation-based framework. Brilliantly navigating these ambitions, she provides the first major literary history of Québec, what will be compulsory reading for scholars in francophone postcolonial studies and an ideal introduction for anglophone scholars of Canadian literature.