Stylistics and feminism: Free indirect discourse in Bonheur d’occasion

The project associated with this experiential learning proposes a reinterpretation of a fundamental, if not seminal1 work of Québec literature: Bonheur d’occasion (1945), by Gabrielle Roy. The reinterpretation will be structured around three areas that focus, respectively, on prefiguration (realistic aesthetics), configuration (heterolingualism), and the refiguration of the novel in translation (The Tin Flute), first in the United States in 1947, then in English Canada in 1980.  

stylistic and narratological (point of view) analysis; discursive feminist approach

The proposed project concerns the first area: the realistic aesthetic that Gabrielle Roy chose to adopt for her first and most famous novel. The realist novel, which first emerged in England and flourished in nineteenth-century France through writers including Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant and Zola. It is characterized not only by its themes, but also (and perhaps most importantly, as critics since Roland Barthes and Philippe Hamon have shown), by its writing and its preference for certain rhetorical and stylistic devices. Among the latter, what stands out in particular is the style or discourse known as free indirect speech, a hybrid combination of direct and indirect speech that allows for more effective shaping of the dialogue and thoughts of fictional characters.  

Specifically, this assistantship will involve:  

1. compiling a complete list of instances of free indirect speech in Bonheur d’occasion, as Jacques Dubois and his team did with Zola’s L’Assommoir, and their distribution across the novel’s chapters;
2. measuring the proportion of free indirect speech passages compared to those featuring traditional direct and indirect speech; and
3. breaking the numbers down by their respective distribution among the novel’s female and male characters, to test Lori Saint-Martin’s hypothesis that men dominate in direct speech (words reported verbatim), while women dominate in free indirect speech (thoughts). Thus, the initially formal analysis is complemented by a feminist perspective, based on the work of Sara Mills in stylistics and Susan Snaider Lanser in narratology.  

• Enjoyment of reading (this is a 430-page novel!)  
• Mastery of the grammatical and syntactic rules for transforming direct speech into indirect speech in French
• Interest in the history of Québec

• the ability to approach novels as works of art constructed according to specific structural and compositional principles; an appreciation of the difference between fictional narrative and the reality it depicts;  
• the ability to enrich future literary reading by combining emotional engagement (reading for pleasure: a passion for reading) with rational understanding (knowing how to read: reading as knowledge and skill);
• an understanding of stylistics and narratology (enunciation and focalization) with the professor, who will also discuss them in FRA2732 during the Winter 2027 session.

Note: Students can draw on their familiarity with AI to explore whether and how it facilitates and complicates the three tasks described above, enabling them to use it more effectively and better understand its potential and limitations. 

• Individual meetings with the professor (1 hr every two weeks = 6 hrs) to provide training materials and monitor the work
• If the schedule allows, attend a few online FRA2732 classes on formal analysis and Bonheur d’occasion (6 hrs)
• Independent research:
  • Read the novel (14 hrs, assuming 30 pages per hour) after the initial training, keeping the three tasks outlined above in mind
  • Survey the text during the first reading (extra 14 hrs)
  • Second task: 30 hrs
  • Third task: 20 hrs
• Total: 90 hrs