Abstract

In Quebec literature, the North has often been portrayed as a mythical, sacred, and elusive territory. Recent studies have suggested that literary representations of the North are not simply descriptions of a geographic location, but imagined spaces coloured by aesthetic, political, and ideological values. The present thesis examines my translation of twelve poems by three contemporary francophone authors from Quebec whose work explores the landscape of northern Quebec: Jean Morisset, Maude Smith Gagnon, and Natasha Kanapé Fontaine. In light of contemporary literary and multidisciplinary studies on the North, I will consider the difficulties encountered during translation. In particular, I will focus on how poetic representations of northern Quebec are problematic for writers and translators because poetry is fundamentally auditory, and the northern landscape is primarily associated with silence. Furthermore, I will discuss how the North is an imagined space that varies according to the authors’ culture, gender, and individual experiences. Drawing from research on the poetics of translation, I will strive to preserve each author’s auditory landscape, and thus maintain their varying and distinct perceptions of sound and silence in northern Quebec.