EVANGELINE : AN ACADIAN TALE

Abstract

A great tragedy took place in the history of French colonization in Canada: “le Grand Derangement”. After the treaties of Utrecht and Paris, England received the quasi totality of the French territories in the New World. England, whose aim was to change the ethnic composition of her new colony, sent, in 1755, the majority of the Acadians of French origin into exile to her colonies on the Atlantic shore. The epic poem of American poet Longfellow, Evangeline: an Acadian Tale, revealed the forgotten deportation of the Acadians. Longfellow’s poem became very popular among Acadians and became a myth of identification for them