The very first Janette-Bertrand prize goes to a Glendon professor

Social Monsters

On the Glendon website, Marie-Hélène Larochelle’s bio indicates that the professor in the French Studies department “studies violence and monstrosity in contemporary literature.”

“Yes,” she confirms, “I have been working for 25 years on extreme marginality, homelessness, prostitution, violence,” which she calls “social monsters.”

But she is a literature teacher, not sociology. She therefore looks at the representation of this monstrosity in literature – especially contemporary. His conclusion is that literature can be “performative”, that is to say that it can influence the perception of these issues, and therefore on change.

Marginality

Toronto never blue (in the sense of “always gray”), delves into female marginality: prostitution, homelessness, childbirth in an alley… It is a criticism of the metropolis itself, incapable of helping its citizens in distress.

“It’s a criticism of all the metropolises struggling with these problems,” she explains. “I write about Toronto because it’s my city.”