Michel Tremblay's most recent novel, La Duchesse et le roturier, constitutes the third of the "Chroniques du Plateau Mont-Royal," preceded by La Grosse femme d'à côté est enceinte and Thérèse et Pierrette à l'école des Saints-Anges. The similarities with the two earlier texts are easily identified: once again we visit with Albertine, Gabriel, "la grosse femme," Edouard, Thérèse, Marcel, all inhabitants of the familiar house on rue Fabre in Montréal. La Duchesse et le roturier, however, distinguishes itself from its predecessors. Structurally, one notes a more refined narrative technique; absent are the plethora of explicative and judgmental commentaries of the Protean narrator (although several are still apparent). La Duchesse shares the fragmented narrative scenes of the earlier texts, but several of these tableaux are more lengthy, more detailed, and function as independent narrative units. The focus in this text is on Edouard...