Original scientific paper
Maria Chapdelaine: on the reception of Hémon's tale of French Canada
Sanja Šoštarić
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Zagreb
Abstract
The writer Louis Hémon (1880-1913) was born in a distinguished Breton family. When he was two years old, the family moved to Paris. Although his parents hoped he would build a career in civil service, Hémon went to London in 1902 and then to Canada in 1911. A stay at Péribonka, a village on the shore of Lake Saint-Jean, inspired him to write a novel Maria Chapdelaine: récit du Canada français (1913).
Although it is undoubtedly the most famous work of Canadian literature in French, this novel is unknown to a wider Croatian public. Therefore, the aim of this article is to present Louis Hémon and his novel Maria Chapdelaine, with emphasis on its reception, in which the Parisian publisher Bernard Grasset played a decisive role. After presenting the reception of the Hémon’s novel in Canada and France, the article analyzes its reception in Croatia that has not been previously examined. The research suggests that in Croatia the novel was discovered by the young Catholic intellectual and layman Ivan Merz in the early 1920s. Drago Ćepulić and Slavko Šarić, translators of the Hémon's novel in the Croatian language, were Merz’s colleagues and friends. It can therefore be concluded that in Croatia the novel Maria Chapdelaine was primarily of interest to conservative readers, just as was the case in France. The Croatian translation of the novel was first published in the literary review Vijenac (1923), then in the religious magazine Katolički tjednik (1935-1937), and finally in the form of a book by Akademija Regina Apostolorum, a publisher of religious works. This indicates that during the 1920s and 1930s in Croatia, Hémon’s Maria Chapdelaine was primarily interpreted as a Catholic novel, as was initially the case also in France.
Keywords
Louis Hémon; Maria Chapdelaine; reception; the regional novel; the Catholic novel
Hrčak ID:
228947
URI
Publication date:
26.11.2019.
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