Gerard Bessette, philologist

This article examines the unexpected figure of the philologist in Gerard Bessette's La bagarre (The Brawl) and some later texts. In their search for a paradoxical modernitye Bessette's characters see philology as a means to resolve their existential malaise when confronted with their impoverished linguistic heritage. Philology cannot be reduced to the simple etymological history of the language. The philologist seeks to instigate a therapeutic balance between a dysfunctional French Canadian past and the inevitable desire to break away from the pathological legacy of colonization.