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L'ÉCORCE GROSSIÈRE, L'ÂME ARISTOCRATE: LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF CAJUNS IN FRANCOPHONE LOUISIANA, NINETEENTH CENTURY TO PRESENT _______________________________________ A Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia _______________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy _____________________________________________________ by SCOTT GOSSETT Dr. Carol Lazzaro-Weis, Dissertation Supervisor DECEMBER 2015 The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the dissertation entitled L'ÉCORCE GROSSIÈRE, L'ÂME ARISTOCRATE: LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF CAJUNS IN FRANCOPHONE LOUISIANA, NINETEENTH CENTURY TO PRESENT presented by Scott Gossett, a candidate for the degree of doctor of philosophy of French Language and Literature, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Professor Carol Lazzaro-Weis Professor Richard Bienvenu Professor Flore Zéphir Professor Valerie Kaussen ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS « Un livre est un tel agencement, comme tel inattribuable. C'est une multiplicité… » -Deleuze and Guattari Many thanks, first and foremost, go to my advisor and dissertation director, Dr. Carol Lazzaro-Weis, whose patience and confidence were ever-unwavering. A debt of gratitude is also owed to Dr. Richard Bienvenu, who, in addition to his extensive historical expertise, also provided me access to his personal library. Both proved integral to the success of this study. And of course, thank you to Dr. Flore Zéphir and the department of Romance Languages at the University of Missouri for providing me refuge from Hurricane Katrina my first semester of graduate school. A decade later, this study is a product of your kindness and assistance during a time of upheaval. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................. ii INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................... 1 THE PITFALLS OF ‘AUTHENTICITY’ ...................................................................................... 4 SYMBOLIC STEREOTYPING .................................................................................................. 6 CONVERSING WITH ENGLISH STEREOTYPES ..................................................................... 10 THE FULL PICTURE .......................................................................................................... 15 MYTHOLOGIES ................................................................................................................. 19 NOT YET CAJUN, NO LONGER ACADIAN: ETHNIC ADOPTION IN EVANGELINE AND POUPONNE ET BALTHAZAR ...................................... 24 THE BREAUX MANUSCRIPT AND THE GENTEEL ACADIANS .................. 35 HISTOIRE ......................................................................................................................... 37 PERSONNAGES .................................................................................................................. 39 SUBJECTS OF DISPUTE ...................................................................................................... 44 ACADIANS IN CREOLE SOCIETY: ........................................................................................ 49 ASSIMILATION OR INTEGRATION? ..................................................................................... 49 PAROISSES RIVERAINES ET D’ANCIENNES PRAIRIES .......................................................... 59 VIGILANTES ON THE PRAIRIE ................................................................. 83 LES COMITÉS DE VIGILANCE ............................................................................................. 86 THE LASH ......................................................................................................................... 89 BARDE’S TALE .................................................................................................................. 96 ACADIAN PARTICIPATION IN CIVIL WAR ......................................................................... 106 GUDBEER AND COCO ....................................................................................................... 116 THE VIGILANTE CAUSE ................................................................................................... 124 REENACTING HISTORY: BELIZAIRE THE CAJUN, CAJUN VICTIMIZATION AND THE CAJUN RENAISSANCE ............................................................. 134 ETHNIC (RE)NAISSANCE ................................................................................................. 134 CAJUN CINEMA .............................................................................................................. 142 THE INTERSECTION OF MYTH AND HISTORY ................................................................... 150 HISTORY CONTRADICTS ITSELF ...................................................................................... 153 CONCLUSION: .......................................................................................... 159 WORKS CITED .......................................................................................... 169 VITA ......................................................................................................... 175 iii INTRODUCTION “Quand nous pensons sur nous, quand nous essayons de nous connaître au fond nous usons des connaissances que les autres ont déjà sur nous, nous nous jugeons avec les moyens que les autres nous ont donné de nous juger. Quoi que je dise sur moi, toujours le jugement d’autrui entre dedans.” (Sartre, Extraits) I grew up in Southern Louisiana living Cajun culture and carrying on Cajun traditions. At the same time, I enjoyed American music, sports, television and cinema. While I was a true American child of the nineteen eighties and nineties, my family heritage is Catholic with Cajun French-speaking grandparents from the “Cajun heartland” on both paternal and maternal sides. We pâcqued eggs at Easter; we fished and hunted; we enjoyed crawfish boils, étouffée, gumbo, jamabalaya and the like. I attended “cochon de laits” and danced at “fais do-dos.” I never doubted my Cajun heritage. As native Francophones from the prairies of Eunice, my grandparents learned in school that they were different and it was there that they learned to be American and to speak English. For myself, the opposite occurred: school is where I learned what it meant to be Cajun. It’s where I learned that Cajuns were the descendants of the Acadians, French settlers of present-day Nova Scotia (formerly Acadie) who were exiled from their settlement by the British in 1755, an episode referred to as the Grand Dérangement. According to the myth—which, like most good myths, does have its basis in history—many of these Acadians then sought refuge in Louisiana because they believed the territory to be French and they could rebuild. These Acadians became known as the Cajuns. The connection of the Cajuns to Acadians is strengthened by the assertion that the term Cajun is 1 an Anglicized corruption of the French Acadien. The myth accentuates the transplanted nature of the Cajuns, having white European roots, and is a myth canonized by stories such as the poem Evangeline written by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In reality, despite my thorough ‘cajun-ness,’ my family never spoke of ‘ancestors’ or ‘bloodlines’ or ‘Acadie/Acadian.’ They never spoke of exile; Louisiana was their home, and many of my family do not even know what brought them there. When asked why they were Cajun, like many members of the oldest generations, they simply respond that they just are and that they always have been. That was good enough at the time, but it became a very difficult question to answer as I grew older. If it was in school where I learned what Cajun meant, it was also through education—in college—where I was taught that I was, in fact, not a Cajun; neither my surname, Gossett, nor my mother’s maiden name, Andrepont, were considered Cajun because they were not descended from the displaced Acadians. Like many Cajuns do, I pored over family trees and Acadian genealogy websites until I found ‘true’ Acadian surnames, like Richard, in my mother’s bloodlines and Breaux in my father’s. This, however, gave me little solace. Must every Cajun prove their authenticity through an exhaustive research into an ever-increasingly inaccessible, tenuous past? If so, why stop at Acadie1? After all, if bloodlines are a 1 Contrary to popular belief that Cajun identity began in Acadie, there is historical evidence that suggests that Acadian customs were much closer to their French origins than to what we now consider to be Cajun. (Mouhot, Les réfugiés acadiens en France, 1758-1785: L’impossible réintégration?) 2 concern, what difference is there between a ‘pure’ Cajun/Acadian and ‘pure’ French? Do the Acadians not share the same bloodlines as the French from whence they originate? Table 1: Liste des familles acadiennes réfugiées en Louisiane (Ditchy, 226) Liste des familles acadiennes réfugiées en Louisiane Allain Deveau Leblanc Arseneau Douaron ou Doiron Lejeune Aucoin Doucet Laverdure Lemaire Babin Dugas ou Dugast Lomeron Babineau Dupuis Martin Bayot Gaudet Mélanson ou Mélençon Belliveau Gautreau Mirande Benoit Girouard Naquin Bernard Godin Pelletret Blanchard Grandclaude Peseley Boudrot ou Boudreau Guérin Petitpas Bourc Guilbaut Pinet ou Pisnet Bourq