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Biography of Octave Crémazie
Name: Octave Crémazie
Birth Date: November 8, 1827
Death Date: January 18, 1879
Place of Birth: Canada
Nationality: Canadian
Gender: Male
Occupations: poet
Octave Crémazie
Octave Crémazie (1827-1879) was a Canadian poet who was closely linked to the emergence of French-Canadian literature.Known as Octave, Claude-Joseph-Olivier Crémazie was born on Nov. 8, 1827, and educated in Quebec. He became the business associate of his brother Joseph in 1844. Octave used their bookshop as a base for his literary interests; buying, reading, and discussing recent works from France, particularly Victor Hugo's. A group around Crémazie formed what became known as the École Patriotique or the École de Québec. Nationally selfconscious and grandiloquently romantic, it created the first characteristic body of French-Canadian literature about 1860. Meanwhile, Crémazie's own affairs went badly, and in 1862 he fled to France to avoid pursuit for forging guarantors' signatures in order to gain credit for his failing business.Crémazie's writings include occasional verse, more personal poems, various letters, and a diary. The poems …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…his cultural context are indicative of French Canada's grave doubts about its cultural survival. In politics Crémazie supported right-wing positions generally and French imperialism in particular, but he was a liberal patriot at home. A similar deep contradiction is found in his poetic diction, for his attempts to imitate Hugo are overshadowed by his obvious affinity to the older style of the neoclassicists.Crémazie was in Paris during the siege of 1870 and kept a diary containing details on living conditions and expressing anti-Communard sentiments. He died on Jan. 18, 1879, in Le Havre, where he had found modest employment. Further Reading Crémazie's works were collected and published in 1883 as Oeuvres complètes, although there are many omissions. Maurice Dassonville, Crémazie (1956), contains useful biographical and bibliographical information. For background information see Ian Forbes Fraser, The Spirit of French Canada: A Study of the Literature (1939).
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