Montano I, Melva

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

COMPTES RENDUS 135 risent le monde de Lemelin. Falardeau remarque : « Le monde urbain canadien-fran"ais resume une experience radioale dans notre evolution et ne signifie rien de moins qu'une societe nouvelle a creer et des valeurs nouvelles a trouver OU a inventer > (p. 133). , Depuis les romans de Gabrielle Roy et de Roger Lemelin, la vie rurale est a peu pres eliminee du roman canadien. La grande ville, plus souvent un quartier ou une paroisse, devient le centre du roman et, par son import·ance, ecrase les individus. Ce changement brusque, ainsi que le conflit entre des generations et !'incomprehension entre pere et fils, refletent le drame profond de la classe moyenne qui a grandi trop vite et qui n'a pas eu le temps ou n'a pas su trouver les moyens de « se mettre en situation ,. . Le contraste entre les univers romanesques de Charbonneau et de Lemelin est frappant. L'univers du premier existe et organise grace au songe; celui de Lemelin appartient a l'ere de !'action. Cependant, malgre les differences evidentes ces deux univers ont une similitude certaine. Dans les deux cas, les personnages principaux sont des jeunes hommes. « Que le monde de ces jeunes hommes soit interieur et reve, comme chez Charbonneau, OU qu'il soit exterieur et conteste, comme chez Lemelin, il y a chez les uns et les autres une malediction initiale qui paralyse le desir d' action ou I' elan de contestation ,. (p. 223). Depuis une vingtaine d'annees l'reuvre litteraire est scrutee par des psy-chologues et des sociologues. Bien sur, les historiens de la litterature acceptent diflicilement de voir les schemes traditionnels mis en question OU meme rejetes. Malgre des problemes methodologiques, dus au fait que les relations entre l'reuvre litteraire et la societe ne se sont pas encore saisies d'une fa"on neces-saire, scientifique et sans equivoque, les tentatives d'elaborer une sociologie litteraire doivent se poursuivre. Jean-Charles Falardeau est un des premiers a tenter I' exploration de la « mythologie de notre inconscient lt a travers le roman. II est a esperer qu'il nous livrera une synthese de sa pensee. Les etudes dans son livre Notre societe et son roman montrent le chemin parcouru depuis 1959 par ce chercheur infatigable. John HARE, Centre de Recherches en Litterature canadienne-franqaise, Universite d'Ottawa. * * * MANUEL ZAMORANO. - Crimen y literatura; ensayo de una anthologia criminolOgU:o-literaria de Chile. Santiago : Facultad de Filosofia y Educacion, 1967. 468 pp. In most Latin American universities, criminology has been studied entirely from juridical points of view. The modern tendency towards inter-136 HISTOIRE SOCIALE - SOCIAL HISTORY disciplinary approaches, however, has seen criminologists draw upon sociology, anthropology, psychology and history as well as upon the juridical sciences. The Chilean social pathologist Manuel Zamorano here turns to literature, with its narratives of personal experience and its perceptive imagination, to enlarge the criminologist's picture of the motives behind anti-social behaviour. His declared intention is "to utilize literary documents as a source for the devel-opment of research". Ultimately, his studies have the purpose, "in a more extensive phase of analysis, ... of examining crime in the greatest landmarks of American and universal literature". He has begun ·hy limiting himself, in the volume under review, to Chilean authors. He prints selections from works by forty-one of them, drawn from the most varied literary genres. Each describes some act or tendency regarded as criminal. Each is preceded by an "analytical study", a commentary on its author and on the work from which it is drawn. These commentaries are directed, with varying emphasis and consistency, towards the age, social extraction, profession and ideology of each author; the physical and psychic features, and the socio-economic level, of the protagonist in each selection; the environment in which each work is set; and the criminological theory that it involves. A final section, which is translated into English, analyzes and tabulates the information given in the commentaries. Within this format, Professor Zamorano attempts "to present the facts and their analysis in a strictly multi-disciplinary perspective". He is an enthusiastic exponent of Mertonian ideas about marginal behaviour, and has a wide understanding of the dilemmas involved in trying to reconcile the moralist's, the social scientist's and the legalist's approaches to crime. To he aware that quest.ions of motive and responsibility are complex, however, is not the same as having a distinctive viewpoint to which different disciplines contribute without contradicting or ignoring one another. Professor Zamorano does not appear to have defined any such viewpoint, which perhaps is the reason for the rather miscellaneous character of his analysis. It shows a certain dispersion of concepts about a great variety of themes, whose con-nection with criminality is not always evident. The commentary preceding Joaquin Diaz Garces' "El mas hruto de los heros'', for example, includes a diversion on "the historical and chronicalist tradition of Chile - a country of historians -" and on the steps that those in charge of historical studies should follow (pp. 70-71). Farther on, an incident provokes a judgment, offered as "an anthropological note worthy of being registered", on "the tutelary emotive attitude and high human quality of the Chilean woman". The multi-disciplinary rubric may justify every such diversion, hut one looks in vain for the perspective that is supposed to he the result. Historians at least will he hard put to discern a connection between the organization and the conclusions of this hook. The literary selections are COMPTES RENDUS 137 divided into five chronological periods, because, as Professor Zamorano says ( p. 25), " ... a knowledge of the dates of publication contributes to the under-standing of the historical, cultural and sociological background of the corre· sponding periods". If by this he means that historians, whether of crime or of Chile, may find the usefulness of his book enhanced by its chronological organization, he may be right. If he means that the five periods are significant for his own analysis, he is declaring intentions that remain unfulfilled. There is no explanation for the choice of five periods, each of which works out to include about the same number of selections (either seven or nine). The commentaries preceding each selection do provide some information on which an explanation might be based; but that information is in no way related to his concluding analysis. The final tabulation assigns the criminal acts garnered from Chilean literature to one or other of seven categories, as if they had really been committed against a common background, or as if the dramatic unities of time and place could be assumed for them. The categories are adult masculine delinquency, adult feminine delinquency, juvenile delin· quency, "beatnik" delinquency, social maladjustment or predelinquency, and "other". Dealing with a series of real or imagined criminals over a period of more than a century (1841-1962), Professor Zamorano pays only incidental attention to the changing circumstances in which they were produced. It may be that crime, at least in literature, is eternal; but in that case why organize it chronologically ? It is equally hard to see how the data drawn from forty-one literary imaginations is related to any scientific hypothesis about criminal psychology. Most of the authors represented would apparently agree with Professor Zamorano that "the majority of criminal acts are carried on at a level of perfectly alert and responsible consciousness". At least the selections he has taken from their works generally describe such acts. But his notes on the "psychic features" of each protagonist correspond only occasionally to any set of psychological categories, and only superficially to his own categories of delinquency. The notes are sometimes restricted to citing some paragraph of the work, or to describing the protagonist as "clever but cowardly" (p. 40, referring to Pancho Falcato). More curious yet is the note on "El Bandido" ( p. 49) : "psychic features, negro mulatto. Violent, commits his crimes moved by resentment and vindictive motivations; bold and brave leader." Having provided himself with such material, Professor Zamorano has wisely concluded (p. 25) that "the statistical treatment of the data interested us, for the present, merely for descriptive purposes". The methods of the social sciences being postponed, only their language remains. Melva MONTANO I. Centro de Investigaciones de Historia Americana, UniversUlad de Chile. 

MANUEL ZAMORANO. - Crimen y literatura; ensayo de una anthologia criminológico-literaria de Chile.

https://hssh.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/hssh/article/download/40523/36706

MANUEL ZAMORANO. - Crimen y literatura; ensayo de una anthologia criminológico-literaria de Chile.

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Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)