Trente Arpents (1938) is a novel that breaks with the tradition of the regional idyll by portraying the Canadien farmer as a tragic rather than a romantic figure and presents Québec rural life as subject at once to the vagaries of climate and the impact of urbanization. Under the pseudonym "Ringuet," author Philippe Panneton dramatizes Euchariste Moisan's fall from youthful prosperity, married to his farm, to impoverished old age, trapped in an American factory town. Conflicts between generations are equally pervasive in the country and the city; rural life before WWI is only marginally better than city life. Claiming to write realism rather than naturalism, Panneton employs the seasons as a symbolic and structuring device in order to reveal the frailty of human hopes compared to the indifferent but powerful forces of nature and time. The novel was awarded prizes in both France and Québec; Felix and Dorothea Walter's translation, Thirty Acres, won the Governor General's Award in 1940. It has also been translated into German.
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- MLA 8TH EDITION
- Lacombe, Michèle. "Trente Arpents". The Canadian Encyclopedia, 01 May 2014, Historica Canada. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/trente-arpents. Accessed 05 November 2024.
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- APA 6TH EDITION
- Lacombe, M. (2014). Trente Arpents. In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/trente-arpents
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- CHICAGO 17TH EDITION
- Lacombe, Michèle. "Trente Arpents." The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Article published February 07, 2006; Last Edited May 01, 2014.
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- TURABIAN 8TH EDITION
- The Canadian Encyclopedia, s.v. "Trente Arpents," by Michèle Lacombe, Accessed November 05, 2024, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/trente-arpents
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Trente Arpents
Article by Michèle Lacombe
Published Online February 7, 2006
Last Edited May 1, 2014
Trente Arpents (1938) is a novel that breaks with the tradition of the regional idyll by portraying the Canadien farmer as a tragic rather than a romantic figure and presents Québec rural life as subject at once to the vagaries of climate and the impact of urbanization.