Article

Jacques Allard

Published Online January 15, 2007

Last Edited December 14, 2013

Jacques Allard, professor, essayist (b at La Tuque, QC 1939). Jacques Allard successively pursued his studies at the Collège de Valleyfield (B.A., 1961), l'Université de Montréal (licence, 1964), l'École normale supérieure de Paris (C.A.P.E.S.,1964) and l'Université de Paris VIII (doctorate, 1976).

Allard, Jacques

Jacques Allard, professor, essayist (b at La Tuque, QC 1939). Jacques Allard successively pursued his studies at the Collège de Valleyfield (B.A., 1961), l'Université de Montréal (licence, 1964), l'École normale supérieure de Paris (C.A.P.E.S.,1964) and l'Université de Paris VIII (doctorate, 1976). After having taught at various educational institutions, and at l'Université de Montréal, he was named a professor at l'Université du Québec à Montréal (1970), where he headed the department of French studies from 1976 to 1978

Also a reporter, a radio and television host, and correspondent for several periodicals, he was the founder of the literary review Voix et Images (1974) and the editor-in-chief for Editions HMH Hurtubise. Since 1984, he has been literary editor for the publisher les Éditions Québec Amérique.

A brilliant essayist (Travaux sémiotiques, 1984), high powered literary critic (from 1992 to 1996, and critic on Québécois literature for the daily Le Devoir), he was the author of major works including the collection of essays Traverses de la critique littéraire au Québec, 1991; Le roman mauve: microlectures de la fiction, 1997; and Le Roman du Québec, 2001. With a refined and sensitive style, Jacques Allard helped breathe new life into the study of literary texts by examining, down to the slightest detail, the relationship between characters and their environments (Zola, le chiffre du texte, Lecture de l'Assommoir 1978), which made him a figurehead among the new Québécois critics. Currently he maintains an interest in the study of discourses on religion, politics, and love - themes on which the Québécois novel was built in the late 20th century, and which Allard reduces to three images: le Ciel, la Cité and la Chambre.