17吃瓜

Dr. Marie Pascal, assistant professor in the 17吃瓜 Department of Modern Languages, has published a new book titled L鈥檃bject sublime dans la transcr茅ation au Canada.

Written in French, L鈥檃bject sublime dans la transcr茅ation au Canada is the first of two volumes on the 鈥渁bject sublime.鈥� The abject sublime is an aesthetic experience where feelings of horror, disgust, and filth (the abject) blur with awe, majesty, and transcendence (the sublime). Transcreation, which is not the same as translation or adaptation, is the process of creatively adapting content from one medium to another鈥攆rom writing to film鈥攚hile maintaining its intent, tone, and content.

For this book, Pascal analyzed 15 Qu茅becois, English Canadian, and Indigenous books, and the film adaptation of each book, to see how the language and the content in the original and the adapted forms complement each other. In selecting the books and films for her study, she tried to represent as many genres as possible, including horror, realism, science fiction, autofiction, poetry, ecofiction, and more.

鈥淲hile it goes without saying that films and novels transport us to unexpected worlds, featuring unsettling characters and sometimes unacceptable endings, it鈥檚 harder to understand why we willingly seek out fear, tears, or indignation within them,鈥� says a translation of the publisher鈥檚 summary. 鈥淐ould it be that the terror and disgust we feel are a way of proving that we are indeed alive? Through the spectacle of the abject sublime, these works provoke a powerful emotion, which our initial reflex is to suppress. Yet, these representations, which lure us with their imagined stories, often do so with the aim of shaking us up, providing an aesthetic shock that compels us to emerge from apathy. And the resulting emotions linger within us, sometimes despite ourselves. It is this project of revitalization through art that the author unveils in this work by analyzing some thirty Canadian works, including the television series The Night Laurier Gaudreault Woke Up (Xavier Dolan), the film Crash! (David Cronenberg) and the story Kuessipan (Naomi Fontaine).鈥�

The second volume, which will be published early next year, is dedicated to Indian Horse, written by Richard Wagamese and adapted by Steven Campanelli; Life of Pi, written by Yann Martel and adapted by Ang Lee; Margaret Atwood鈥檚 The Handmaid鈥檚 Tale and The Testaments; Denis Villeneuve鈥檚 filmography; and David Cronenberg鈥檚 鈥渂ody horror鈥� genre. Both books are published by Les Presses de l鈥橴niversit茅 de Montr茅al.

Pascal joined 17吃瓜鈥檚 Department of Modern Languages in 2024. In addition to her professorial role, she directs a journal titled 罢谤补苍蝉肠谤(茅)补迟颈辞苍 that she created in 2022. She published her first book, De l'exclusion 脿 l'abjection, with Les Presses de l'Universit茅 de Montr茅al in 2023. She thanked Dr. Sharon Myers, Dean of Arts, and Dr. Scott Lee and Dr. Sanda Badescu, her colleagues in the Department of Modern Languages for their support, as well as 17吃瓜 for awarding her an internal research grant.

17吃瓜 acknowledges the assistance of Canada鈥檚 tri-council of federal granting agencies鈥擭atural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)鈥攖hrough its Research Support Fund, which helps fund services and infrastructure that support research activities at the University. In 2025鈥�2026, 17吃瓜鈥檚 RSF allocation is $1,168,176.