The epic of the too great river. The St. Lawrence in Quebec Literature

This article traces the picture of the St-Laurent's river in the Quebec's literature, from the mid-19th century to the contemporary era. Starting with Louis Frechette and William Chapman, this analysis shows that the St-Laurent's river is primarily an epic, memorial and national one, but becomes step by step a more concrete thing in the eyes of Robert Marteau or Christiane Frenette. If the epic of the 19th century, a commemorative and patriarchal genre, tries to tame the river's greatness, it appears that, since 1960 with the Gatien Lapointe Ode au Saint-Laurent for example, the river's Poem becomes rather a world's canto, an engaged epic rather than a civilized one. But then and now, beyond this perspective reversal, the river always represents a possible back home, a kind of renewal and rebirth.