The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems

William Henry DrummondProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.5
Word count
104K words
Chapters
11

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Humor ReliefHeartwarming NarrativeRural WritingDialect CharmFolk CustomsFolk LifeFrench Canada

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems by William Henry DrummondAuthor: Drummond, William Henry, 1854-1907,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Feb 1, 2006

Editor's review

This collection is one of the representative works of dialect poetry in Canadian English literature. Drummond writes in the English accent of French Canadians, depicting everyday scenes of Quebec country life with humor and warmth. The French-Canadian figures in these poems are simple and endearing, attached to the land and family yet resigned to the changes of the times. For readers interested in the origins of Canadian literature, the dialect poetry tradition, or the cultural memory of French-speaking North America, this book offers a unique and approachable entry point. It is short enough to be read slowly and quietly, savoring the rhythm of the speech and the flavor of the dialect. As a public-domain e-book, it costs almost nothing and can serve as supplementary reading for literature courses or as cultural essays.

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Reading tips

  1. Read a few poems aloud first to feel the phonetic effect of the dialect spelling, then go back to the text to understand the meaning.
  2. Read alongside background material on Quebec geography and immigration history to deepen your understanding of the scenes in the poems.
  3. Two or three poems a day is enough; don't rush—leave time to appreciate the humor and warmth.
  4. After finishing, try rewriting one poem in standard English and compare the difference the dialect makes.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11

FAQ

Is the language in this book difficult? The poems use dialect spellings of English with a French-Canadian accent, which may feel unfamiliar at first, but most words are still close to standard English. Reading aloud first and then returning to the text, using context to infer meanings, will make it noticeably easier.
Is it suitable for learning about Canadian history? It offers literary impressions of life rather than systematic historical narrative. It can serve as evocative material for understanding the everyday feelings and rural memories of French Canadians, but it cannot replace historical works.
Does the e-book edition include notes or an introduction? According to the available information, the book is a public-domain electronic text with no mention of additional notes or introduction. Readers can look up background material on the author and dialect poetry as supplementary support.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

William Henry Drummond Author · Canadian · 1854–1907

William Henry Drummond (1854–1907) was a Canadian poet born in Ireland. He is known for his dialect poems portraying French-Canadian rural life, which recreate local speech and everyday scenes and give his work a distinct regional and folk flavor. His representative works, The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems and The Voyageur and Other Poems, reflect his focus on French-Canadian rural subjects. Two of his works are included in this collection, while common classification information is currently unavailable. Other details of his life are limited in public sources and are therefore omitted here; in Canadian English poetry he is remembered for this distinctive regional and linguistic perspective.