Poetry
Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 1847
Opening lines
IN the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas,
Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand-Pré
Lay in the fruitful valley. Vast meadows stretched to the eastward,
Giving the village its name, and pasture to flocks without number.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
At Grand-Pré, an Acadian village on the Minas Basin, English ships have been anchored for four days when the notary draws up the marriage contract of Evangeline and Gabriel. On the day of their betrothal feast, the men are shut up in the church and declared prisoners; five days later, the village is embarked and Gabriel leaves on a different ship from hers. For years she searches for him: she goes down the Mississippi to the bayous of Louisiana, where his boat passes close by her while she sleeps, follows him to the Ozark Mountains, then devotes herself to the poor of Philadelphia.
Context
A Boston pastor, Horace Conolly, had heard from his parishioners the story of two betrothed lovers torn from one another by the expulsion of 1755; Hawthorne, to whom he had first proposed it, judged it foreign to his manner. The poet, who had seen neither Acadia nor Louisiana, relies on history books, including T. C. Haliburton's on Nova Scotia, and chooses unrhymed dactylic hexameter, the metre of Greek and Latin epic. Published on 1 November 1847, the book went through six printings within a few months. Statues of the heroine have since stood at Grand-Pré and at Saint-Martinville.
Who it is for
A long narrative poem in unrhymed hexameters, slow and deliberate in movement. French translations are numerous from the nineteenth century onwards; that of Pamphile Le May dates from 1865.
Prizes and reception
The most famous of its author's works in his lifetime, translated into dozens of languages, and the narrative from which the Acadians made a story of their origins.
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