This perceptive intellectual history explores the role of manhood in French Canadian culture and nationalism. In the late nineteenth century, Quebec was still an agrarian society, and masculinity was rooted in the land and the family and informed by Catholic principles of piety and self-restraint. As the industrial era took hold, a new model of manhood was forged, built on the values of secularism and individualism. Vacante’s analysis reveals how French Canadian intellectuals defined masculinity in response to imperialist English Canadian ideals. This “national manhood” enabled French Canadian men to participate in a modern, industrial economy while asserting their cultural authority.

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Jeffery Vacante is an assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Western Ontario. He is an intellectual and gender historian whose research focuses on modern Quebec. His work has appeared in some of Canada’s leading journals, including Canadian Historical Review, Journal of Canadian Studies, Left History, and University of Toronto Quarterly.

Jeffery Vacante livre dans sa monographie une étude brillante sur l’articulation entre masculinité, nationalisme et modernité au Québec.

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