De lettre intime à lettre ouverte dans Lettres à l’Indigène de Joël Des Rosiers
In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the era of new technologies and electronic communication, email has become the preferred way to send and receive private messages, replacing therefore paper letters. Knowing this, why would an individual want to share his private content by publishing it openly, publicly, furthermore in a paper format, making it available to all readers wishing to view the content? Nevertheless, such is the genesis of the collection of letters, Lettres à l’Indigène of Joël Des Rosiers in which the author donated love letters that became " common objects that share the recipient and the man who wrote, the book and the readers "(LALI, p. 7).  Thus, it is through the recovery of an old epistolary practice that this book reflects an intimate writing in which private letters and open letters meet. The intimate letters contain several resemblances with the conventional letters, but distinguish themselves from it on certain points. Open letters, as for them, are more similar to the free publications which we find in the diverse paper or Web periodicals, as well as in the various blogs. In both type of letters, we are able to see the place of the addresser and that of the Other, we present the various constructions of the space related with each of the forms of letter and we reveal the diverse formal strategies which allow to see a play between public and private spheres. Thus, we demonstrate different ways in which this book questions the intimacy of the 21st century, as well as the practice of intimate writing in the current era.
Joël Des Rosiers Epistolary Current intimate writing Quebec contemporary literature