Through the ages, the pursuit of Happiness has been at the heart of the needs and desires each individual would seek to fulfill, while as a concept, Happiness has always resonated strongly in poetic as well as philosophical, sociological and psychological contexts. But what about Happiness today, in a world dominated by technology, driven by productivity and dictated by efficiency? Does Happiness still feature in contemporary fiction in any significant way? Or has it perhaps gone underground, adopting different guises? Would we still call that “duty of happiness” that Pascal Bruckner saw as “present at the second half of the twentieth century” a relevant force today? Or has it waned perceptibly? The articles brought together in this volume seek to work out answers to these and similar questions, creatively addressing the imminent risks but also eagerly following up the intriguing possibilities one encounters when interrogating Happiness in the contemporary novel. Originally based on an international conference organized at the University of Haifa, Israel, in May 2010, the volume is structured around the axes we found useful as a basis for the various approaches towards Happiness in Europe and the historical and social events that influenced the writing of Happiness as they defined the 20th century and have impacted on the 21st: the Holocaust, the Soviet dystopia, consumerism, postmodernism, “everyday life,” the various as yet unarticulated new modes of life they have given rise to, and so on. A new writing of happiness then? At the very least this volume targets the contemporary novel without wanting to solidify works, instead taking into account the fluctuations Happiness has been subjected to, and the diversity and especially the paradoxes it has created, while we have been keen to preserve a “precise” reading of the texts and have felt compelled to respect and preserve the particular features that make the writings of the authors we focus on stand out. Thème philosophique aussi bien que poétique, sociologique et psychologique, le bonheur s’édifie à la mesure de chacun. « N’est-il pas vrai que, nous autres hommes, nous désirons tous être heureux ? » (Platon). Or dans notre monde actuel dominé par la technique, la recherche à outrance du productif et de l’efficacité, qu’en est-il du bonheur ? Est-il encore présent aux écritures romanesques contemporaines ? Sous quelles formes se présenterait sa recherche ? Ce « devoir de bonheur propre à la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle » dont parle Pascal Bruckner, continue-t-il toujours à être d’actualité ? S’est-il renforcé ou, au contraire, s’est-il affaibli? Le projet d’un questionnement du bonheur dans le roman contemporain comportait de gros risques, mais il offrait en même temps des possibilités stimulantes. A la suite du colloque international organisé à l’université de Haïfa en mai 2010, les textes réunis dans ce livre, cherchent à élaborer des éléments de réponse à ces questions. Le volume offre un état des lieux du bonheur dans le roman depuis 1980 et présente une large diversité d’approches, de définitions, d’interrogations sur l’écriture du bonheur sur trois décennies. Le recueil s’articule autour d’axes qui ont servi de base aux différentes approches du bonheur en Europe et d’événements historiques et sociaux qui ont pu influencer l’écriture du bonheur aux différentes périodes du XXe et XXe siècles, telles que l’Holocauste, la dystopie en Russie, le postmodernisme et le consumérisme, le quotidien, les différents paradoxes du bonheur, les nouveaux modes de vie. Nouvelle écriture du bonheur? Du moins, ce volume vise-t-il le contemporain sans figer les œuvres, tout en tenant compte des fluctuations du sujet, de sa diversité, de ses paradoxes surtout, tout en conservant la lecture précise des textes et en respectant la particularité de l’écriture des auteurs traités.

Malgré les événements tragiques du XXe siècle, le bonheur s'infiltre dans le roman français contemporain. Cet ouvrage présente l'écriture de la quête du bonheur sur cinq décennies, en s'articulant autour de différentes problématiques du roman et points de rencontre entre littérature et philosophie.

In the Preface to A Certain Difficulty of Being Purdy examines the kinds of discourse that deal with the novel in some nineteenth-century Quebec novel prefaces, thereby revealing a theme of generic denegation in the sense of "This is not a novel." Purdy goes on to explore the transition from epic to novel in Félix-Antoine Savard's Menaud, maître-draveur; the contradictions stemming from the use of a first-person, present-tense narrative in André Langevin's Poussière sur la ville; the problem of narrativity and history as it is raised in Hubert Aquin's Prochain épisode; and the way in which narrative voice functions in Anne Hébert's Kamouraska. He also touches on the current debate concerning the boundaries between modernism and post-modernism. Purdy does not offer an all-embracing system to explain the development of narrative in the Quebec novel, but leads us to an understanding of how these particular novels function, each in its own socio-historical context, and how they achieve or fail to achieve what they set out to do. The thread that runs through the different chapters is a pragmatic concern with Quebec's historical "difficulty of being" as it informs in varying ways the narrative projects of the novels in question.

Women writers have made significant contributions to Quebec's ongoing process of cultural self-definition. Because the novel has traditionally played a central role in the construction of national identity, Quebec literary history has seen the continued production of identity narratives, which Jacques Godbout calls the "national text." Using the tools of contemporary feminist criticism and building on a tradition of work on Quebec women's writing, Mary Jean Green considers issues of national and cultural self-definition, situating the literary texts of Quebec women within a unique political and historical context while also relating them to the work of women writing in other cultural situations, from nineteenth-century Europe to the postcolonial francophone world.

All the Feels / Tous les sens presents research into emotion and cognition in Canadian, Indigenous, and Québécois writings in English or French. Affect is both internal and external, private and public; with its fluid boundaries, it represents a productive dimension for literary analysis. The emerging field of affect studies makes vital claims about ethical impulses, social justice, and critical resistance, and thus much is at stake when we adopt affective reading practices. The contributors ask what we can learn from reading contemporary literatures through this lens. Unique and timely, readable and teachable, this collection is a welcome resource for scholars of literature, feminism, philosophy, and transnational studies as well as anyone who yearns to imagine the world differently. Contributors: Nicole Brossard, Marie Carrière, Matthew Cormier, Kit Dobson, Nicoletta Dolce, Louise Dupré, Margery Fee, Ana María Fraile-Marcos, Smaro Kamboureli, Aaron Kreuter, Daniel Laforest, Carmen Mata Barreiro, Ursula Mathis-Moser, Heather Milne, Eric Schmaltz, Maïté Snauwaert, Jeanette den Toonder