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Tag Archives: Louis Hémon

Regionalism in Québec Fiction: Maria Chapdelaine

14 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, French-Canadian Literature, Quebec, Regionalism

≈ Comments Off on Regionalism in Québec Fiction: Maria Chapdelaine

Tags

1914, Clarence Gagnon, illustrations, Louis Hémon, Maria Chapdelaine, Quebec, Quebec seen by a Frenchman, Regionalism, roman de la terre, roman du terroir

Revised on 14 January 2014
Images by Clarence Gagnon

Péribonka

The next step in our examination of regionalism in Quebec literature is Maria Chapdelaine.  I have published a short post on Maria Chapdelaine, a novel written by Louis Hémon (12 October 1880 – 8 July 1913), a Frenchman born in Brest.  After studying law and oriental languages at the Sorbonne, Hémon moved to London and, in 1911, to Quebec, Canada.  In 1912, he spent several months working with cultivateurs, or farmers, in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean area, up the beautiful Saguenay River.  He  lived in a community called Péribonka and spent the winter of 1912-1913 in that community, writing his novel.

Having completed his manuscript, Hémon sent it to France and started travelling west, probably to Edmonton, where French citizens had settled at that time.  Hémon was killed in a train accident on 8th July 1913, at Chapleau, Ontario.  He did not live to see Maria Chapdelaine become a bestseller.  It has been translated into more than 20 languages in 23 countries and it has been made into three movies.[i] 

The plot is simple. But, although Maria Chapdelaine is a roman du terroir, it differs substantially from Patrice Lacombe’s La Terre paternelle and from Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau’s Charles Guérin. Louis Hémon did not feel dispossessed of his ancestral land and betrayed.  And he had not transformed the insurrections of 1837-1838 into an ethnic conflict, which they were not, at least initially.

pu-logo

The artwork featured in this post are illustrations for Maria Chapdelaine, executed by Clarence Gagnon and housed at the McMichael Museum, in Kleinburg, Ontario.

However, Hémon worked with men like Maria Chapdelaine’s father, Samuel Chapdelaine a name not coincidentally resembling that of the Father of New France, Samuel de Champlain.  These otherwise unemployed men were trying to transform rebellious soil into arable land.  They had gone north, as the colourful curé Labelle (24 November 1833 – 4 January 1891) advocated, and were “making land” (faire de la terre).[ii]  Father Labelle preached “colonisation.” That was the “patriotic” alternative to leaving for the New England states.

Maria’s ‘Choices:’  F. Paradis, L. Surprenant & E. Gagnon

As indicated in my post, Hémon gives Maria Chapdelaine three suitors: François Paradis, Lorenzo Surprenant and Eutrope Gagnon.  François dies in a snow storm, which was to be expected.  In traditional Quebec society, happiness was viewed not only as impossible, but as dangerous.  Lorenzo Surprenant has come north to find a wife and take her down to the United States, but Maria turns him down.  She will marry a neighbour, Eutrope  Gagnon, and live as her mother lived.  The names of the suitors are revealing: Paradis is paradise, Surprenant, surprizing, and Gagnon, close to the verb gagner: to win.  Hémon’s novel is somewhat stylised.

Maria Chapdelaine also differs from La Terre paternelle and Charles Guérin in that, unlike Chauveau’s Charles Guérin, it does not feature an ‘ugly’ Englishman: Mr Wagnaër. As for La Terre paternelle, although the novel does not feature an explicit ‘ugly’ Englishman, Jean Chauvin fails where an Englishman would have succeeded.  I believe this is the reason why Lacombe views cities as unhealthy.  

 —ooo—

Our next regionalistic novel is Father Félix-Antoine Savard‘s (August 31, 1896 – August 24, 1982) Menaud maître-draveur, 1937 (translated as Boss of the River, or Master of the River by Alan Sullivan (1947).  It earned Savard a Medal from the French Academy.  

To view more illustrations of Maria Chapdelaine, by Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté,
please click on the following link: http://www.archiv.umontreal.ca/exposition/louis_hemon/oeuvre/oeuvre_page2-3.html
 
_________________________  

[i]  1934: Maria Chapdelaine, directed by Jean Duvivier, starring Madeleine Renaud and Jean Gabin (France); 1950: The Naked Heart, directed by Marc Allégret, starring Michèle Morgan (France); 1984, Maria Chapdelaine, directed by Gilles Carle, starring Carole Laure (Québec).

[ii] Curé Labelle, a legendary figure, is featured in Claude-Henri Grignon’s (Sainte-Adèle, 8 July 1894 – Québec, 3 April 1976) novel Un homme et son péché (1933).  Grignon’s novel was transformed into a very popular serialized radio and television drama.   A film adaptation, entitled Séraphin: Un homme et son péché, Séraphin: Heart of Stone, was released in 2003, but it had been filmed in 1949.  Séraphin is a miser and he is cruel to his wife Donalda.

The White Horse, by Clarence Gagnon 
 
 
thedayafterthestorm300© Micheline Walker
7 June 2012
WordPress 
 
revised
14 January 2014
 
 
 
 
Related Posts:
  • Maria Chapdelaine
  • Patrice Lacombe’s La Terre paternelle (3 June 2012)
  • Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau’s Charles Guérin (5 June 2012)

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The Regionalist Novel in Quebec: Survival

27 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Canada, Literature

≈ Comments Off on The Regionalist Novel in Quebec: Survival

Tags

Claude-Henri Grignon, Félix-Antoine Savard, French-Canadian literature, Germaine Guèvremont, Louis Hémon, Maria Chapdelaine, Philippe Panneton, Regionalism

Mild Spring by Claude A. Simard, R.C.A. (2010)

(Claude A. Simard is featured with permission from La Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal)

Today, I will start and perhaps finish writing about our last Regionalist Novel in Quebec: Ringuet‘s Trente Arpents. If you are interested in French-Canadian literature and use my posts as further information on both Canadian literature and history, you may wish to keep the list below. There are other romans de la terre or romans du terroir, or novels of the land (regionalism), but the works listed below are fine representatives of this school, and some are classics. The theme underlying these novels is survival, as in Margaret Atwood‘s Survival.

Classification: The Canadien runs out of Land

I do not want to put these novels into little boxes, but a moderate degree of classification is necessary. Maria Chapdelaine, by Louis-Hémon, a Frenchman, tells the entire story. However, it does not convey the despair of those French-Canadians who had to leave Canada because they the thirty acres allotted their ancestors in the seventeenth century had shrunk. The exodus was a tragic and quasi-genocidal episode. Quebec could not afford to lose close to a million inhabitants.

The finest depiction of the Exodus is Ringuet’s (Dr Philippe Panneton)  Trente Arpents or Thirty Acres.

Ideological Texts

1. In La Terre paternelle, French-Canadians are told that it is better to stay on the land. The same advice is given in Charles Guérin, were it not that Charles Guérin, Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau‘s novel, also brings up the thorny matter of the lack of professions available to French-Canadians living in Quebec.

2. Un Homme et son péché (Les Belles histoires des pays d’en haut), by Claude-Henri Grignon, is about a séraphin, a miser. But it features real-life who advocate colonisation: faire de la terre (making land). “Notre culture sera paysanne… ” supports that ideology.

Poetical

1.  In Menaud, maître-draveur, Félix-Antoine Savard‘s novel, no explicit ideology is expressed, but Englishmen will be renting the mountain so they can harvest its riches. Menaud feels dépossédé (disowned). A French-Canadian no longer “tied” (lié) to the land, le Délié, will be pocketing the rental money. Savard’s novel is a masterpiece. It is a poetical, evocative, and “green” novel. Do not abuse nature.

2.  Le Survenant (and its sequel: Marie-Didace), Germaine Guèvremont‘s novel is also very poetical. It has a bucolic and, at times, spell-binding quality. The land is rich and it still feeds French-Canadians. In The Outlander (Le Survenant), the central character, is both liked and feared.

Patrie Littéraire (after Lord Durham’s Report)

La Terre paternelle and Charles Guérin are Patrie littéraire novels. They were written in the wake of Lord Durham’s report, who described French-Canadians as having no history or literature.

Radio and Television serials

Un Homme et son péché* (Radio and TV) and Le Survenant* (TV) were serialized and extremely popular.

The “Bad” Englishman and the “Vendu” (sold)

The “bad” Englishman is Wagnaër in Charles Guérin and the “vendu,” le Délié in Menaud, maître-draveur.    

  • La Terre paternelle, Patrice Lacombe (1846) ←
  • Charles Guérin, Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau (1846)
  • Maria Chapdelaine, Louis-Hémon (1914)
  • Un Homme et son péché, Claude Henri Grignon (1933)*
  • Notre culture sera paysanne ou elle ne sera pas (We will be peasants or we will not be), Public letter to André Laurendeau, an article published in L’Action nationale, n° 6, juin 1941, pp. 538-543. 
  • Menaud, maître-draveur, Félix Antoine Savard (1937)
  • Trente Arpents, Ringuet (Dr Philippe Panneton) (1938)
  • Le Survenant, Germaine Guèvremont (1945)*
  • The Canadian & his “Terroir”

I will be writing about Laurendeau, l’Action nationale, Refus global, etc.

 —ooo—

Gilles Vigneault sings Gilles Vigneault: Mon Pays

© Micheline Walker
17 June 2012
WordPress
45.408358 -71.934658

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Regionalism in Québec Fiction: Maria Chapdelaine

07 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, French-Canadian Literature, Quebec, Regionalism

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

1914, Clarence Gagnon, illustrations, Louis Hémon, Maria Chapdelaine, Quebec, Quebec seen by a Frenchman, Regionalism, roman de la terre, roman du terroir

Péribonka

The next step in our examination of regionalism in Quebec literature is Maria Chapdelaine. I have published a short post on Maria Chapdelaine, a novel written by Louis Hémon (12 October 1880 – 8 July 1913), a Frenchman born in Brest. After studying law and oriental languages in the Sorbonne, Hémon moved to London and, in 1911, to Quebec. In 1912, he spent several months working with cultivateurs, or farmers in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean area, up the beautiful Saguenay River. He lived in a community called Péribonka and spent the winter of 1913 in that community, writing his novel.

Having completed his manuscript, Hémon sent it to France and started travelling west, probably to Edmonton where French citizens had settled at that time. Hémon was killed in a train accident on July 8, 1913, in Chapleau, Ontario. He did not live to see Maria Chapdelaine become a bestseller.  It has been translated into more than 20 languages in 23 countries and it has been made into three movies.

The plot is simple, but, although Maria Chapdelaine is a roman du terroir, it differs substantially from Patrice Lacombe’s Terre paternelle and Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau’s  Charles Guérin. Louis Hémon did not feel dispossessed of his ancestral lang and betrayed. And he had not transformed Maria Chapdelaine into an ethnic conflict, which it was not, at least initially.

 

Image result for mcmichael museum logo

The artwork featured in this post are illustrations for Maria Chapdelaine, executed by Clarence Gagnon and housed at the McMichael Museum, in Kleinburg, Ontario.

However, Hémon worked with men like Maria Chapdelaine’s father, Samuel Chapdelaine a name not coincidentally resembling that of the Father of New France, Samuel de Champlain.  These otherwise unemployed men were trying to transform rebellious soil into arable land.  They had gone north, as the colourful curé Labelle (November 24, 1833 – January 4, 1891) advocated, and were “making land” (faire de la terre).[i] Father Labelle preached “colonisation.” That was the “patriotic” alternative to leaving for the New England states.

Maria’s ‘Choices:’ F. Paradis, L. Surprenant & E. Gagnon 

As indicated in my post, Hémon gives Maria Chapdelaine three suitors: François Paradis, Lorenzo Surprenant and Eutrope Gagnon. François dies in a snow storm, which was to be expected. In traditional Quebec society, happiness was viewed not only as impossible, but as dangerous. Lorenzo Surprenant has come north to find a wife and take her down to the United States, but Maria turns him down. She will marry a neighbour, Eutrope Gagnon, and live as her mother lived. The names of the suitors are revealing: Paradis is paradise, Surprenant, surprizing, and Gagnon, close to the verb gagner: to win.

Maria Chapdelaine also differs from La Terre paternelle and Charles Guérin in that, unlike Chauveau’s Charles Guérin, it does not feature an ‘ugly’ Englishman: Mr Wagnaër. As for La Terre paternelle, although the novel does not feature an explicit ‘ugly’ Englishman, Jean Chauvin fails where an Englishman would have succeeded.  I believe this is the reason why Lacombe views cities as unhealthy.  

—ooo—

Our next regionalistic novel is Father Félix-Antoine Savard‘s (August 31, 1896 – August 24, 1982) Menaud maître-draveur, 1937 (translated as Boss of the River, or Master of the River by Alan Sullivan (1947).  It earned Savard a Medal from the French Academy.  

To view more illustrations of Maria Chapdelaine, by Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, 
please click on the link below: http://www.archiv.umontreal.ca/exposition/louis_hemon/oeuvre/oeuvre_page2-3.html 
_________________________      

[i] Curé Labelle, a legendary figure, is featured in Claude-Henri Grignon’s (Sainte-Adèle, 8 July 1894 – Québec, 3 April 1976) novel Un homme et son péché (1933). Grignon’s novel was transformed into a very popular serialized radio and television drama and was also made into a movie twice. The second movie is entitled Séraphin: Heart of Stone (2003). Séraphin is a miser and he is cruel to his wife Donalda.

The White Horse, by Clarence Gagnon 
 
 
 
thedayafterthestorm300© Micheline Walker
7 June 2012
WordPress 
 
Related Posts:
Maria Chapdelaine 
Patrice Lacombe’s La Terre paternelle
Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau’s Charles Guérin
 
 
45.409050 -71.934580

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