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Why were Rodolphe Girard and Albert Laberge criticized for their portrayals of rural life?
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Canadian literature
Canadian writer Alice Munro was lauded as a âmaster of the contemporary short storyâ by the Swedish Academy when it awarded her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013.
Rodolphe Girard and Albert Laberge were criticized and ostracized because they portrayed country life too realistically.1
During the early 20th century, the dominant literary group in Quebec, the regionalists, promoted an agriculturalist ideology that idealized rural life. Because Girardâs Marie Calumet (1904) and Labergeâs La Scouine (1918) depicted the realities of rural existence rather than adhering to this romanticized vision, their work was censured by the prevailing cultural and social standards of the time.1