From Acadian to American: The literary Americanization of Cajuns (Louisiana, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, George Washington Cable, Kate Chopin, Ernest Gaines, James Lee Burke, Tim Gautreaux)

My dissertation studies the means by which literature becomes the vehicle not only for the American assimilation of the Cajun ethnic minority, but also for the reclamation of Cajun heritage and pride. The history of Cajun fiction is the history of Acadians becoming Americans, which also made them Cajuns.; The first half of this study examines the literary representation of Cajuns in the work of three nineteenth-century authors. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow intentionally mythologized the Louisiana Acadians in Evangeline (1847) because they represented a non-British, thus more native, American culture. George Washington Cable's representation of the process of converting Cajuns to English language usage in Bonaventure (1888) commented on national unity following the Civil War. Kate Chopin's use of Cajun racial ambiguity (1890s) coded a message about patriarchal controls on literary portrayals of female sexuality.; The second half analyzes the representation of Cajun identity in the work of three twentieth-century writers who work, to varying degrees, to recover a more candid portrait of Cajun identity. Ernest Gaines utilizes the interstitial position of Cajun racial status, somewhere between wealthy white landowners and south Louisiana's African American population, to argue for the necessity of racial cooperation. James Lee Burke portrays Cajun Americanization and the Cajuns' complete loss of Evangeline's innocence to write of national injustice and sin in his Dave Robicheaux detective series (1986--today). Like the earlier writers, Gaines and Burke are not Cajuns. Tim Gautreaux is. His contemporary fiction celebrates traditional cultural ways while illustrating the difficulties facing today's Cajuns as they struggle to maintain pride in their ethnic difference in the midst of American assimilation. His Cajun characters demonstrate how, even while embracing Americanization, Cajuns can maintain their unique ethnic identity.