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<p>How can children’s literature address cultural marginality without naming it? Gabrielle Roy’s four animal tales—<i>Ma vache Bossie</i>, <i>Courte-Queue</i>, <i>L’Empereur des bois</i>, and <i>L’Espagnole et la Pékinoise</i>—quietly pose this question. Written in mid-century francophone Canada, these fables of cows, cats, caribou, and dogs appear gentle and pastoral yet carry a deep reflection on loss, belonging, and the muted forms of resistance available to those living on the edges of community. This article reads them as more than overlooked curiosities in Roy’s œuvre; they become case studies in how children’s literature encodes historical and cultural tensions such as linguistic assimilation, rural displacement, and colonial silence through animal figures and understatement. Drawing on postcolonial theory, animal studies, and narrative ethics, the analysis engages recent thought on vulnerability and mediation (Hertmans, Pelluchon, Lepage, Harvey) to frame Roy’s stories as part of a minor literature of childhood where opacity and witnessing replace overt moral lessons. Situated within wider debates on empathy, interspecies ethics, and minority childhoods, the article argues that these prairie narratives illuminate global questions of how children learn to navigate otherness and care. Far from peripheral, Roy’s tales expand the ethical and imaginative reach of children’s literature, whispering truths about fragility and belonging that grander narratives often overlook.</p>

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Rewriting Vulnerability: Animal Figures and Marginal Voices in Gabrielle Roy’s Children’s Literature

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年12月1日

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  • Laurent Poliquin

摘要

How can children’s literature address cultural marginality without naming it? Gabrielle Roy’s four animal tales—Ma vache Bossie, Courte-Queue, L’Empereur des bois, and L’Espagnole et la Pékinoise—quietly pose this question. Written in mid-century francophone Canada, these fables of cows, cats, caribou, and dogs appear gentle and pastoral yet carry a deep reflection on loss, belonging, and the muted forms of resistance available to those living on the edges of community. This article reads them as more than overlooked curiosities in Roy’s œuvre; they become case studies in how children’s literature encodes historical and cultural tensions such as linguistic assimilation, rural displacement, and colonial silence through animal figures and understatement. Drawing on postcolonial theory, animal studies, and narrative ethics, the analysis engages recent thought on vulnerability and mediation (Hertmans, Pelluchon, Lepage, Harvey) to frame Roy’s stories as part of a minor literature of childhood where opacity and witnessing replace overt moral lessons. Situated within wider debates on empathy, interspecies ethics, and minority childhoods, the article argues that these prairie narratives illuminate global questions of how children learn to navigate otherness and care. Far from peripheral, Roy’s tales expand the ethical and imaginative reach of children’s literature, whispering truths about fragility and belonging that grander narratives often overlook.