"Travestis politiques": The gay value of Michel Tremblay's dramatic work in translation

Abstract

Michel Tremblay often denies that he writes about gayness, despite frequent themes of sexual difference in his plays. In Hosanna , for example, he has suggested that the gay content is a metaphor for Quebec's aspirations to independence. In other plays, such as Les anciennes odeurs and Messe solennelle pour une pleine lune d'ete, he seems to be advancing a "banalizing" conception of gay identity. Despite these interpretations, a number of Anglophone academics have mobilized Tremblay's texts to make arguments about community-based gay identity and have treated Tremblay as a gay writer. This thesis seeks to determine if this appropriation is facilitated by the translation process, as a result of the translators intervening in the texts to enhance their gay content. Ultimately, it seems this is not the case, suggesting that the appropriation of Tremblay's work results more from the gay community reading its own conceptions of gay identity into the texts than from the translation process.