Oeuvres by Joseph Lenoir, and: L’Oeuvre poétique d’Eudore Evanturel: édition critique (review)

198 LETTERS IN CANADA 1988 Joseph Lenoir. Oeuvres. Edition critique parJohn Hare etJeanne d'Arc Lortie, seo Les Presses de l'Universite de MontreallBibliotheque du Nouveau Monde. 331. $40 .00 L'Oeuvre poetique d'Eudore Evanturel: edition critique. Texte etabli et annote par Guy Champagne Les Presses de I'Universite Laval. Vie des lettres quebecoises 26. xxxv, 349. $29.95 The late 1980s have witnessed a remarkable upsurge in the number and quality of critical editions devoted to Quebec literature. Two of the more interesting of these appeared during 1988: editions of the poetical works of two 'rediscovered' secondary poets of the nineteenth century, Joseph Lenoir (1822-61) and Eudore Evanturel (1852-1919). The Lenoir volume, prepared by two recognized authorities on nineteenth-century Quebec poetry, greatly extends our knowledge of its subject's life and writings. ·Born in the Montreal suburb ofSaint-Henri to a family of illiterate tanners and leather-workers, Joseph Lenoir was educated at the College de Montreal through the generosity of the Sulpicians. While still a student he began writing verse, and before being commissioned as a lawyer in 1847 he was already associated with the liberal newspaper L'Avenir; romantic poetry and republican politics would be the chief concerns of his short existence. Influenced by Byron, Hugo, Lamartine, and Vigny, he experimented with dozens of verse forms, explored exotic themes, pleaded for social justice, compiled an early French-Canadian anthology, and translated poems by Burns, Longfellow, and Goethe. In a substantial introduction based on archival documents and contemporary newspapers, Hare and Lortie reconstruct the poet's family background, education, literary and political activity, and thought; 'the biographical and bibliographical information is then summarized in a detailed chronology. The texts offifty-two signed poems and a dozen others attributed to Lenoir (the sole previous edition, published in 1916, contained only twenty-one pieces) are accompanied by meticulous historical notes and all relevant variants. As no Lenoir manuscript is extant and most of the poems were published only once, there are few significant changes. The volume also reproduces Lenoir's occasional prose works: a lecture delivered to the Institut canadien de Montreal, an Indian legend, a guide book to Montreal, and some 'letters to the editor' in defence of dancing; the attribution of the latter has been questioned by Yvan Lamonde (Le Devoir, 24 September 1988). The Hare-Lortie edition of Lenoir is thus a scholarly compendium of all that is known about a previously neglected writer. Itis beautifully printed in the elegant (and expensive) format of the Bibliotheque du Nouveau Monde, which now includes eight titles. There are a few misprints, chiefly in proper names (MacPherson, 44; Phelas, 52; Cowen, 54; Seminaires, 80; Erlkoenig, 151; Nemesis 166), but they do not detract from the remarkable quality of this excellent edition. HUMANITIES 199 The Evanturel edition grew out of Guy Champagne's 1982 MA thesis, first suggested by the veteran folklorist and literary historian Luc Lacourciere, who generously loaned the author's notebook from his own collection for the purpose. Eudore Evanturel, son of a cabinet minister in the Macdonald-Sicotte government, studied at the Petit Seminaire de Quebec and was a Quebec civil servant until the fall of the Joly ministry in 1879. His only published volume, Premieres Poesies (1878), with a preface by the historical novelist Joseph Marmette, was a fresh and varied collection of amorous and descriptive pieces inspired in part by Musset and the French Symbolists. Its mild eroticism and playful personif~cations were promptly denounced by conservative critics hostile to Marmette. Discouraged, Evanturel moved to the United States, where he became secretary to the historian Francis Parkman; he returned to Quebec in 1887 and for the rest of his life served the province as an archivist in Washington and Boston. Champagne's introduction describes the ultramontane ideology and reactionary literary views prevalent in nineteenth-century Quebec and recounts the unfavourable critical reception accorded to Evanturel's collection, although adding little to the information provided earlier by Roger Le Moine (Joseph Marmette, sa vie, son oeuvre, 1968). The editor's chronology of Evanturel's life is disappointing in its omission of any reference to the poet's studies, literary training, role as...