Dialogues with a Canadian

In this series of satirical dialogues, the Baron de Lahontan and Kondiaronk, a historical Indigenous leader given the fictional name Adario, spar over the virtues and faults of their respective societies and spiritual beliefs. Lahontan landed in Canada as a French marine in 1683, a teenaged dispossessed baron full of literary ambition and having already settled on Lucian’s satirical dialogues as one of his literary and intellectual lodestars. Quite possibly even before he set sail he had thought of writing a satirical dialogue, an ambition the Dialogues would fulfil marvellously, making his encounter with Kondiaronk, a man of legendary rhetorical skills, truly providential.

In these dialogues Adario consistently gets the upper hand, exposing the hypocrisy of French society and the Catholic Church. Published in French in The Hague in 1703 and in a stilted, faulty English translation in London that same year, with subsequent translations into other languages, the Dialogues instantly became a popular success across Europe, causing a scandal for their unremitting criticism of European society.

The literary and philosophical influence of the Dialogues would endure throughout the 18th century. As the first popular salvo in what would become the Enlightenment, the Dialogues can be seen in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and in the writings of Diderot, Voltaire and Leibniz, among many other leading intellectual figures of every stripe across Europe.

In the Dialogues an Indigenous person speaks directly to Europeans, articulating an Indigenous worldview which captivated readers. The Dialogues are thus not just the first great work of Canadian literature; they are a necessarily transcultural exchange and collaboration, effectively co-authored by colonised and coloniser—under unequal power relations, but giving the weaker party the winning hand in the intellectual skirmish.

This English translation of the Dialogues is the first since their initial publication over 300 years ago. It renders all the zest and zing of the original, with topics ranging from the spiritual to the ribald, showing why it was such a popular success and why it had such great influence on European literature and philosophy. With this new translation modern-day readers will rediscover the Dialogues’ appeal and marvel at their relevance to contemporary society.

The Dialogues are accompanied by a major essay by French literature scholar Gilbert Chinard on their place in 18th-century thought and literature and by a note on the text by translator Timothy Barnard. The book is rounded out by six full-page illustrations from the original edition of Lahontan’s writings.