Maria Chapdelaine

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maria Chapdelaine is the title of a novel by Louis Hémon (1880-1913) first published in a newspaper in 1914 and published as a book in 1916 . Only after the author's death did the book become an international success, translated into many languages ​​and filmed several times.

content

Maria, protagonist of the novel, grows up in the very rural and lonely area of Peribonka in Québec ( Canada ). The novel depicts the hard, hard life of the settlers who work their way further and further into the wilderness and make the soil fertile. Maria, the eldest daughter of such a settler family, is of marriageable age and has to choose between three "admirers", each of whom could be interesting for her and her future life in his own way. The ranger François Paradis symbolizes the closeness to nature and freedom of the forest farmers; but he dies in a blizzard. Lorenzo Surprenant stands for the lure of civilization and consumption; After François's death, Maria is more indulgent to his advertisements. After the death of her mother, Maria remembers the farming tradition inherited from her ancestors and marries the simple farmer Eutrope Gagnon.

effect

Hémon turns the God-fearing peasant girl Maria, who has a firm character, into a symbol of a peasant folk culture, which is based on the Joan of Arc myth. The novel is evidently influenced by the epic Mirèio Frédéric Mistral , who received the Nobel Prize in 1904. The bourgeois Catholic elite of the province of Québec found in this figure a figure to identify with in the fight against the increasing socio-economic dominance of the Anglophones. The book was emblematic of the agro-cultural novel du terroir and thus contributed to the emergence of a francophone national consciousness. I.a. The Catholic priest and author Félix-Antoine Savard referred to this model in a patriotic novel about a raftsman Menaud maître-draveur (Québec 1937).

The book, which had a circulation of 1.5 million in France alone, became an international bestseller due to the widespread uneasiness about the collapse of tradition and capitalist modernization. It differs from the blood-and-soil literature in its lack of any aggressiveness; the melancholy about ultimately unsolvable contradictions saves it from the embarrassments of homeland literature .

The Maria-Chapdelaine Regional County Municipality , to which Peribonka belongs, was named after Maria Chapdelaine .

Text output

Numerous translations in all world languages

  • Translated by Cornelia Bruns: Maria Chapdelaine . Rascher, Zurich no year (1923) and others
  • Translated by Karin Meddekis: Maria Chapdelaine. A classic in French-Canadian literature . Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1999 ISBN 3-404-14221-7 pp. 7 - 178
  • in French: Maria Chapdelaine, récit du Canada français . Tundra Books, Toronto 2004 ISBN 0-88776-697-8

literature

  • Nicole Déchamps u. a .: Le mythe de Maria Chapdelaine . University Press, Montreal 1980 ISBN 2-7606-0496-9
  • Árpád Vigh: Le style de Louis Hémon et l'explication des québécismes . Edition Septentrion, Sillery, QC 2002 ISBN 2-89448-308-2
  • Joanna Warmuzinska-Rogbi: Est-il raisonnable de retraduire "Maria Chapdelaine"? In Europe - Canada. Transcultural perspectives. Edited by Klaus-Dieter Ertler a . a. Peter Lang, Bern 2013, pp. 113–125
  • Patricia Demers: A Seasonal Romance. Louis Hemon's "Maria Chapdelaine". ECW Press, Toronto 1993

Film adaptations

  • 1934 - Maria Chapdelaine . Director: Julien Duvivier , with Madeleine Renaud as Maria Chapdelaine and Jean Gabin as François Paradis. The film was partly shot in Péribon.
  • 1950 - The Dreaming Heart ( Maria Chapdelaine ) - Director: Marc Allégret
  • 1972 - Death of a Woodcutter ( La mort d'un bûcheron ) - Director: Gilles Carle
  • 1983 - Maria Chapdelaine . Directed by Gilles Carle

Project Gutenberg -Text Public Domain

Due to legal attacks against the project by S. Fischer Verlag , there has been no access from the Federal Republic of Germany since 2018.

Web links

Commons : Maria Chapdelaine  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus-Dieter Ertler: The French-Canadian novel of the thirties: An ideological analysis. De Gruyter, Berlin 2000
  2. ↑ Louis Hémon, Kindler's new literature lexicon , Munich 1996. Vol. 4: Gs-Ho, p. 669f.
  3. ↑ Also included, only recognizable in the table of contents, are 5 shorter stories: Jérôme; Liette, the beautiful one there ...; The old; The Fate of Miss Winthrop-Smith; Lizzie Blakestone. They come from La Belle que voilà from 1923. The French versions are online: Access