Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Sainte-Anne-de-Sabrevois, Quebec, Canada
About Gérard Bessette
- Gérard Bessette (25 February 1920, in Sainte-Anne-de-Sabrevois, Quebec – 21 February 2005, in Kingston, Ontario) was a French Canadian writer and educator. Bessette grew up in Montreal and attended the Collège Saint-Ignace.
- He continued his studies at the Université de Montréal, where in 1950 he completed his doctorate entitled Images in French-Canadian poetry. Unable to obtain an academic position in Quebec because of his atheism, he taught at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh from 1951–1957.
- He then found a job in Kingston, Ontario, first at Royal Military College of Canada in 1958, and then in the Department of French Studies at Queen's University from 1959 to 1979.
- Bessette's novel Le cycle (1971) won the Governor General's Award, and in 1980 he was awarded the Prix Athanase-David, Quebec's highest literary honour. Several of Bessette's works address issues that led to and were representative of the Révolution tranquille, a series of societal shifts that took place in Quebec during the 1960s, which saw increased secularization and a general movement away from the influence of the Catholic Church.
- His earlier works are written in a realistic style, while his later novels utilize elements of the nouveau roman literary movement and tend to be more experimental.
- His literary criticism is noted for its Freudian readings of Québécois literature. One of his most noted works is Le libraire (1960), an existential tale of a book store employee in a small Quebec town in the 1950s.
- The book deals with one of Bessette's most common themes: the stifling culture of Quebec of that time.
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See Also
- Famous People's Birthdays on 25 February, Canada
- Famous People's Birthdays in February, Canada
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- Famous literary critic's Birthdays in February, Canada