The Age of Confession/L'Âge de la confession

Par Neil Bissoondath

In this illuminating essay, Neil Bissoondath explores the powerful influence exerted by narrative on the human psyche. Storytelling is a primary activity in the human experience. The stories that we tell ourselves, as well as those we hear from others, help to answer the question of who we are, "as individuals, as familial beings, as social beings." On a deeper level, stories are also subtle forms of confession. They reveal our dreams and desires, our fears and fantasies, our hurts and pleasures.

Sifting through history, Bissoondath examines how governments, both totalitarian and democratic, have sought to control and to simplify narrative. Novelists, to different and contradictory ends, have used narrative as a sphere of exploration and discovery, where questions are numerous and answers are rare. Fiction, suggests Bissoondath, is a subtle, yet powerful narrative form, unsurpassed in its ability to confirm human complexity and to affirm human existence.

Dans cet essai édifiant, Neil Bissoondath explore la puissante influence qu’exerce la narration sur la psyché humaine. Raconter des histoires est une activité primordiale dans l’expérience humaine. Les histoires que nous-mêmes racontons, de même que celles que nous entendons raconter par d’autres, nous aident à répondre à la question de savoir qui nous sommes « en tant que personnes, en tant que membres d’une famille, en tant qu’êtres sociables ». À un niveau plus profond, les histoires sont aussi une forme subtile de confessions. Elles révèlent nos rêves et nos désirs, nos peurs et nos fantasmes, ce qui nous blesse ou nous fait plaisir.

Puisant des exemples dans l’histoire, Bissoondath examine comment les gouvernements, tant totalitaires que démocratiques, ont cherché à contrôler et à simplifier la narration. Les romanciers, quant à eux, ont utilisé la narration à des fins différentes et contradictoires comme une sphère d’exploration et de découvertes, où les questions sont nombreuses et où les réponses sont rares. Bissoondath suggère que la fiction est une forme de narration subtile mais néanmoins puissante, qui est sans égale dans sa capacité à confirmer la complexité des hommes et à affirmer l’existence humaine.

• Langue: Français
• Éditeur: Goose Lane Editions
• Date de sortie: 8 nov. 2010
• ISBN: 9780864925886

Neil Bissoondath

Born in Trinidad, Neil Bissoondath has lived in Canada for more than thirty years. He is the author of six works of fiction and a controversial work of nonfiction entitled Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada. He has received the Canadian Authors Association Fiction Award and the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. His work has been short listed for the Governor General's Award, the Guardian Fiction Award (UK), and the Prix Femina Étranger (France). He teaches creative writing at Université Laval in Quebec City. Né à Trinidad, Neil Bissoondath vit au Canada depuis plus de 30 ans. Il est l’auteur de six œuvres de fiction et d’un essai controversé intitulé Le marché aux illusions : la méprise du multiculturalisme au Canada (traduction de Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada). Il a remporté le Canadian Authors Association Fiction Award et le prix Hugh MacLellan remis à la meilleure œuvre de fiction. Ses ouvrages ont été finalistes au Prix du gouverneur général, au Guardian Fiction Award (Royaume-Uni) et au prix Fémina étranger (France). Il est professeur en création littéraire à l’Université Laval, à Québec.

Aperçu du livre

The Northrop Frye International Literary Festival honours Northrop Frye, one of the twentieth century’s leading intellectuals, literary critics, and educators. A celebration of Frye’s contribution to culture and civilization, the festival is dedicated to the advancement of literacy and the appreciation of literature. It also promotes Canada’s bilingual literary heritage by bringing together French and English authors from around the region, across the country, and throughout the world.

The Frye Festival began in April 2000. Since then, forty poets, dramatists, and fiction and non-fiction writers from the Atlantic region, across Canada, and around the world have gathered each year in Moncton, New Brunswick, where Frye grew up. For four days, they participate in bilingual events, reading their works in schools, cafés, and restaurants in the language in which they write.

The Antonine Maillet - Northrop Frye Lecture began in 2006. A close collaboration between the Northrop Frye International Literary Festival and the Université de Moncton, this series exemplifies two great traditions: the literary heritage of Antonine Maillet and the critical heritage of Northrop Frye. It will eventually develop into the bilingual Antonine Maillet -Northrop Frye Research Chair in Imagination and Criticism, hosted by the Faculté des arts et des sciences sociales at the Université de Moncton.

NEIL BISSOONDATH

      The Age of Confession

The Antonine Maillet - Northrop Frye Lecture

Copyright © 2007 by Neil Bissoondath

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form

or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any

retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence

from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). To contact

Access Copyright, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call 1-800-893-5777.

Cover and interior page design by Julie Scriver.

Author photo courtesy of Neil Bissoondath.

Translation by Jo-Anne Elder.

Printed in Canada.

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Bissoondath, Neil, 1955-

The age of confession / Neil Bissoondath.

(Conférence Antonine Maillet-Northrop Frye = Antonine Maillet-Northrop Frye lecture)

Text in English and French.

Title on added t.p., inverted: L’âge de la confession.

Co-published by: Université de Moncton.

ISBN 978-0-86492-482-7

1. Narration (Rhetoric) 2. Identity (Psychology) in literature. 3. Storytelling.

4. Politics and literature. 5. Multiculturalism. I. Université de Moncton II. Title.

III. Title: Âge de la confession. IV. Series: Conférence Antonine Maillet-Northrop Frye.

PN3383.N35B57 2007      809.3’923      C2007-900161-0E

Goose Lane Editions acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council

for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry

Development Program (BPIDP), and the New Brunswick Department of

Wellness, Culture and Sport for its publishing activities.

Goose Lane Editions

Suite 330, 500 Beaverbrook Court

Fredericton, New Brunswick

CANADA E3B 5X4

www.gooselane.com

Contents

Preface

The Age of Confession

Notes on Neil Bissoondath

Notes on Antonine Maillet

Notes on Northrop Frye

Preface

Neil Bissoondath’s lecture The Age of Confession inaugurated the Antonine Maillet - Northrop Frye Lecture, an annual event made possible by the close collaboration between the Northrop Frye International Literary Festival and the Université de Moncton. The goal of this partnership is to exemplify two great traditions at the same time: the literary heritage of Antonine Maillet and the critical heritage of Northrop Frye. The speaker’s challenge was to reflect simultaneously the principles of a French-language novelist and an English-language critic, both of international stature. On Saturday, April 26, 2006, Neil Bissoondath, a novelist, a sometimes controversial critic, and a professor of creative writing at Université Laval, spoke before the distinguished audience that had gathered in the Council Chambers of Moncton City Hall. In The Age of Confession, he met this challenge superbly.

Named after Antonine Maillet, the Acadian writer from Bouctouche, and Northrop Frye, the literary scholar and critic who grew up in Moncton, the annual lecture will provide new opportunities to explore a double phenomenon, the social and literary character of both the writing of fiction and its critical reception. The connection between fiction and criticism reveals, on one hand, the social and aesthetic significance of the literary practices of writers, and, on the other, the synthesizing, intuitive, and analytical insights of critics. The importance of this social and literary experiment in symbolic fusion lies in the respective reactions of a writer and a critic facing different experiences in Canadian socio-cultural contexts. Similarly, the objective of the lecture series is to stimulate a more profound reflection on the literary and social understanding of fiction and critical writing as texts which might be viewed as both products and producers of social discourse. The mandate of the lecture series is, broadly speaking, to reflect upon and discuss the necessary connection between the writing of fiction and the writing of literary criticism in both of Canada’s official languages.

In The Age of Confession, Neil Bissoondath shows very clearly that he has grasped the intention of this unique literary occasion. Great writing has the noble purpose of producing pleasure, he reminds us, a purpose often overlooked, unfortunately, in the teaching of literature. Considering narrative to be the powerful shaper of the imagination and therefore of a person’s most intimate identity, he says, It is a way of declaring: I exist. Bissoondath also considers narrative in a global sense: the ways in which larger forces attempt to use narrative to shape our lives. As he trenchantly observes, Narrative is a powerful and incandescent tool, yet we rarely recognize our need for it. It is this very nature that makes narrative both a promise and a threat. Without a narrative through which we can discover and define our identity, each of us is vulnerable to the political imposition of other myths, narratives, plots. The imposition of a political narrative is central to the story Bissoondath tells in his most recent novel, The Unyielding Clamour of the Night (2005), which might be considered essential reading in our post-9/11 world. The Age of Confession does not refer to the fiction of Antonine Maillet or subscribe to the theories of Northrop Frye, yet in their own ways, both Antonine Maillet and Northrop Frye engage the ideas Bissoondath expresses: Maillet enlists the plenitude of myth in her fictive portrayal of Acadian culture, and Frye’s criticism is essentially a theoretical portrayal of myth and metaphor.

At the end of a book by a great writer, the reader feels a sense