Evangeline (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- First Published: 1847
- Type of Work: Poem
- Genres: Poetry, Narrative poetry
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Love or romance, Native Americans or American Indians, Eighteenth century, Canada or Canadians, Romanticism, Frontier or pioneer life, French Canadians
- Locales: United States, Mississippi River, Nova Scotia, Canada
Evangeline had its origin in an anecdote. A South Boston man named Connolly urged Nathaniel Hawthorne to write the tale of a young woman who was exiled from Nova Scotia and searched for her lost love, only to find him a moment before his death. Hawthorne never picked up the subject, but Longfellow did. He believed that it was a wonderful tale of a woman's fidelity; it was a perfect subject for his gentle sensibility. He also used historical sources, so the basic tale and the historical frame were given to the poet.
Evangeline begins with a brief introduction in...
[The entire page is 1254 words long]
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