Joseph Quesnel Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Joseph Quesnel

Joseph Quesnel is remembered as the author and composer of the first operetta written and performed in Canada, probably the first in North America. He was born on 15 November 1746 in Saint Malo, France, to Isaac and Pélagie Duguen Quesnel. It seems that Quesnel visited South America and the Orient before entering his uncle's shipping firm in Bordeaux. In the fall of 1779 Quesnel was sent to the United States with a cargo for the Revolutionary Army. However, the ship was captured by the Royal Navy, and Quesnel found himself in Halifax. Having obtained a passport from Frederick Haldimand, the governor-general, he went to Montreal, where he entered the firm of Maurice Blondeau, a fur trader, and married Blondeau's stepdaughter, Marie-Josephte Deslandes, the following year. Quesnel took an active part in the cultural life of Montreal, playing in amateur theatrical companies and composing music for the church.

In 1788 he returned to Bordeaux to claim his inheritance and to make arrangements for importing wine with his brother who had taken his place in his uncle's firm. During his stay he attended many performances at the Grand Théâtre and sketched out an operetta. On his return to Montreal he founded a theater company with several of his friends. In January 1790 they produced Colas et Colinette ou le Bailli dupé. Comédie en trois actes et en prose, mêlée d'ariettes, an operetta in three acts, which became his best-known work. During the following years, Quesnel became obsessed with the desire to write and compose. Around 1795 he had amassed enough wealth to retire to Boucherville, a small village about thirty miles from Montreal. His passion for poetry led him to complain more and more bitterly about the lack of interest of his compatriots in his work. However, he published very little, and most of his work circulated in manuscript. His operetta, although printed in 1808, was not put on the market until 1812 and then only the libretto, because John Neilson had been unable to print the music. A definitive edition of his works would contain thirty or so poems and five dramatic works as well as the music for two of them. Such a volume has yet to be published.

Colas et Colinette. Comédie en trois actes et en prose, mêlée d'ariettes, with its fourteen vocal parts, takes its inspiration from French works of the period. The five characters are the usual stereotypes of the eighteenth-century theater: the village lovers--Colas, a rather naive young man, and Colinette, a pretty orphan; M. Dolmont, the village squire and guardian of the young girl; the Bailiff, who in order to marry Colinette takes advantage of Colas's gullibility by having him sign an enlistment when he thinks he is signing a marriage contract; and finally, L'Epine, a rustic valet whose colorful speech adds to the comedy.

L'Anglomanie, Barre du Jour, a one-act verse comedy written in 1802 (but not published until 1965), must be considered Quesnel's most important work. It shows how the predominant political and economic role of the English in Quebec since 1760 had influenced the social structure of the former French-Canadian aristocracy. Thinking to please the governor, who had been invited to dinner, the squire takes on English manners. On the advice of his son-in-law, an officer in a British regiment, he refuses to invite anyone who is too French, even his own mother. In the end, the governor decides not to come since the squire's family will not be there. Another play, in the satirical vein, attributed to Quesnel is Les Républicains français, Barre de Jour (published in 1970). Set in Paris at the height of the Terror, it is a parody in which a whole society is attacked through the actions of six members of the lower order being shown in the worst light possible. It serves as a refutation of revolutionary ideas circulating at that time.

Quesnel's poetry is mainly circumstantial and descriptive; his charming songs"A Boucherville" and "Stances sur mon jardin a Boucherville" recall the simple pleasures of his pastoral retreat. For this eighteenth-century man poetry sometimes takes on a didactic or philosophical tone. In his first poem,"A M. Panet," he chides his friend for his faith in Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire, and he describes with a light touch the eccentricities of his contemporaries. He remained preoccupied with the role of the writer in society and wrote three long poems on this subject:"Epître à Labadie," in which he describes how his early works were received in Montreal; "Le Dépit ridicule," which satirizes his ridiculous attempts to read a sonnet to his neighbors in Boucherville; and finally, "La Nouvelle Académie. Songe," in which he dreams of a literary academy in Quebec. His political poems are perhaps of more interest. In 1799 Quesnel was pro-British on account of his hatred for the French Revolution (in"Songe agréable" ); however, in 1803 he spoke out against "L'Anti-français," those who seem to hate everything French. Finally, in 1806, he wrote "Les Moissonneurs," symbolizing the racial conflict in Quebec as a harvest in which the Quebecois can never overtake the English no matter how hard they work.

As a writer Quesnel left an indelible impression on the cultural elite of his day in Quebec, and even two decades after his death his name was often held up as a model. A disciple of Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, Pierre de Ronsard, and Molière, he served as a link between Quebec and France in a period when the Quebecois were just beginning to overcome the traumatic experience of the 1760 conquest.