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This article is based on Jean Echenoz's first novel, Le méridien de Greenwich (1979), and focuses on the status of the scientific researcher and his/her place in the social domain. The article first examines this issue from a sociological perspective, then examines a few particular effects of “science fiction” in Occidental society, effects manifested in the novel while the intellectual power of a scientist is at stake.

AbstractThis article sets out to examine a number of the more prevalent representations of the literary translator in theoretical writings. The literary translator, more so than the translator of pragmatic texts, is called upon to deal with the transfer of foreign cultural elements, or alterity, to the target culture during the translation process. Of particular interest in this paper is how the translator deals with cultural alterity (rejection versus acceptance) and the impact of his or her position on the translation product. At one extreme is Henri Meschonnic's figure of the translator as a “passeur” of dead texts who have lost their cultural memory, and at the other is Michael Cronin's figure of the translator as an agent of metamorphosis, who while enacting change also undergoes transformation. Figures of translators located between these two extremes occupy an in-between, or a third, space where two or more cultures come into contact and overlap. These translators are sensitive to the passage of time and are very aware of the degree to which national cultures can be an artificial construction. Thus, they are invariably aware of their position that is located both outside of and within binary oppositions of Self versus Other. Those literary translators who live in close contact with the linguistic and cultural Other tend to find it neither dangerous nor repulsive. As a result, the likelihood of rejecting the foreign in the literary translation is considerably reduced.

Keywords: traduction littéraire, traducteur, altérité, binarismes, métamorphose, literary translation, translator, alterity, binarism, metamorphosis

The purpose of this study was to investigate factors related to the involvement of seniors in a national action-research project. Information was collected by in-depth interviews with the participants involved (n=5) in the Montreal site of the project. The elderly described six main motivations: changing things, using one's skills and experience, working with a team, being altruistic, maintaining a status and a valued role in society and, finally, acting according to one's philosophy and ideology of life. These data partly corroborate previous results. However, this study highlights the importance of motivations linked to pursuing activities and ways of doing things developed at work before retirement. Strategies aimed at facilitating the involvement of elderly in action-research projects are presented in the discussion.

Keywords: aînés, recherche-action, engagement, motivation, implication, Elderly, Action-research, Involvement, Motivation, Implication

This article focuses on the philosophical implications of Quebec City's Ephemeral Gardens. Eleven different temporary gardens were created during the summer of 2008, as part of the city's 400th anniversary celebrations. While the structure, objectives, and underlying themes of each of these projects are addressed, one particular garden, titled “Wampum 400,” is discussed at greater length. It was created by two indigenous artists, Domingo Cisneros and Sonia Robertson Piekuakamilnu. The analysis reveals how the overall project embodied key issues and strategies related to urban gardens. While pursuing the vision of an ideal garden, it also provided an experience for tourists. Moreover, the Ephemeral Gardens contributed to the development of a postcolonial critique by reclaiming space for collective use, thereby putting into question the epistemological and ontological foundations of the “garden.”

In this paper, we propose exploring the sensibilities as regard the territory of Quebec by focussing on representations of the forest in literary discourses during the first half of the twentieth century. Our research focuses on literary works as discourses on the social, cultural, political and economic context surrounding territorial expansion and is a first step in de-compartmentalizing interdependent universes. In an intellectual environment where the image of the forest seemed caught between two ideologies -the agricultural past versus the surge of sciences- these authors initiated a collective dialogue about the symbolic space occupied by forests in society and, by extension, the larger issue of the social relationships to the territory. These literary works show that, amidst the State's actions, the appropriation of the territory was proposed as a collective and multidimensional act.

This article seeks to contribute to the field of cultural history by studying the relationship between popular culture and academic culture. Various practices and institutions relevant to the history of cinema in Quebec (in-house interpretation, censorship, criticism) are deconstructed in order to highlight the exclusions on which they were often established. The article draws inspiration from recent studies that reassert the value of cultural studies and their interdisciplinary potential.

This paper analyzes the representations of consumerism by the Ligue ouvrière catholique in Quebec between 1939 and 1954 through the lens of gender, class and religious. Based on a close reading of the Ligue's newspapers Le Mouvement ouvrier (1939-1944) and Le Front ouvrier (1944-1954), the analysis seeks to illustrate the importance of sound consumer practices in solving what was perceived at the time as a moral and material crisis for working-class families. Developed by the women's Ligue membership, the discourse was targeted at housewives, seen as the key agents of change in their families.

Popular tales (or tales from the oral tradition) are among the first objects of study in ethnology/folklore. They belong to the realm of orality, often described as “oral literature” or “orature.” This article first presents a historiography of the ethnological study of tales, showing how researchers have shifted their gaze from the “text” to the “context,” i.e., from the object itself to the context in which it is uttered and to the person telling the story. Secondly, to provide an example of what characterizes the oral tale and storytellers of the past, two contemporary storytellers associated with the transmission of a heritage of oral tales—Michel Faubert and Fred Pellerin—are studied in order to illustrate their concept of the tale, their influences, and their storytelling art, while attempting to determine if they are part of the tradition. For these storytellers, the art of the tale consists in making images appear: performance is what nourishes the imagination, and the storyteller's relation with the audience is what makes the tale come alive and what sustains it as an oral form. Today's ethnological research on tales includes modern, multiple and innovative forms emerging from a dynamic process of communication and transmission in which storytellers' performativity plays a key role. From an ethnological perspective, in other words, the art of storytelling is not a kind of folklore that has been relegated to museums but a living tradition.