Paysages (post-)apocalyptiques dans la trilogie de Christian Guay-Poliquin
| Title in English | (Post)apocalyptic landscapes in Christian Guay-Poliquin's trilogy |
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Description | The three novels Le fil des kilometres, Le Poids de la neige and Les ombres filantes' by Christian Guay-Poliquin, a contemporary Quebec author, use the motif of a lonely man, who is exposed to extreme situations and the hostility of nature as soon as he returns to his native village after an odyssey through an apocalyptic landscape. Later, in the third part of the trilogy, the forest takes the place of the village. In all the three novels, a dichotomy between inside and outside can be observed. We see the interior of the car, the cabin, and the forest as spaces protecting the anonymous hero against the hostile landscape reigning outside. It is above all the village which provides the narration with a space cut off from the rest of the world, as is the forest later in the trilogy. A space of protection, the source of wood and game, but also that of danger and the threat of the unknown, the forest and its borders allow for the construction of a space of tension. In our paper, we will analyze the (post-)apocalyptic spa tiality of the above works in the context of Quebec literature, and how this spatiality relates to abandonment, isolation, separation, fear, and the feeling of threat. |
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