What is Evangeline actually about?

*Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie* (1847) tells the story of a young Acadian woman named Evangeline, who is torn from her fiancé Gabriel on their wedding day during the British deportation of Acadians from Nova Scotia in 1755. Throughout her life, she embarks on a quest to find him across North America.

What is a macron and why does it matter in this poem?

A macron is a small horizontal line placed above a vowel to indicate that it's pronounced as a long sound. Longfellow wrote *Evangeline* in dactylic hexameter—the same meter as Homer's *Iliad*—where the difference between long and short vowels shapes the poem's rhythm. The pronunciation notes use macrons to guide readers in achieving that rhythm.

A breve is the curved mark (similar to a small bowl or 'horns,' as described in the note) that appears above a vowel to indicate it is short. Along with the macron, it forms the essential toolkit of classical prosody—the study of poetic meter.

What is ASCII and why can't it show these characters?

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a character encoding standard developed in 1963 that includes 128 characters, which are essentially the letters, numbers, and punctuation found on a standard English keyboard. It doesn't include characters with accents or diacritics, such as ā or ĕ, which meant that early digital texts had to come up with creative solutions, like the bracket system demonstrated here.

Why is Evangeline written in dactylic hexameter?

Longfellow deliberately chose dactylic hexameter to elevate the tale of the Acadian expulsion to the stature of a classical epic. By employing the same meter as Homer and Virgil, he indicated that this was more than a local tragedy; it was a narrative of universal human suffering and endurance.

Who were the Acadians?

The Acadians were French-speaking settlers who had been in what is now Nova Scotia, Canada, since the early 1600s. In 1755, amid the Seven Years' War, British colonial authorities forcibly removed thousands of them in a tragic event called the Grand Dérangement ('Great Upheaval'). Many lost their lives, and families were torn apart. *Evangeline* is the most well-known literary response to this tragedy.

Is Evangeline a true story?

The Acadian expulsion of 1755 provides a real and well-documented historical backdrop. While Evangeline is a fictional character, Longfellow drew inspiration from a story he heard from his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne about a real couple who were separated during the deportation. The poem weaves together historical facts and a crafted narrative.

The Annotated Edition

Special characters by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Summary, meaning, line-by-line analysis & FAQ.

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Poet: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Core theme: Home

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The PoemFull text

Special characters

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A number of characters used in the notes to describe pronunciation do not exist in ASCII. The following conventions have been used to represent them: [=a] 'a' + Macron; ('a' with a horizontal line above). [=o] 'o' + Macron; ('o' with a horizontal line above). [=e] 'e' + Macron; ('e' with a horizontal line above). [)a] 'a' with a curved line above - like horns. [)e] 'e' with a curved line above - like horns. [.a] 'a' with a single dot above End of Project Gutenberg's Evangeline, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

§01Quick summary

What this poem is about

This text isn't a poem—it's a technical note from a Project Gutenberg digital edition that explains how special pronunciation characters (like macrons and breves) are represented in plain ASCII text. Think of it as a guide for readers about the encoding conventions used in the footnotes of Longfellow's *Evangeline*, rather than as a literary piece on its own.

§02Themes

Recurring themes

§03Line by line

Stanza by stanza, with notes

A number of characters used in the notes to describe pronunciation do not exist in ASCII.
Editor's note
This opening line clarifies the note's purpose: the digital transcription of *Evangeline* includes special diacritical marks (accent symbols above letters) in its pronunciation guides, and these marks can’t be typed using standard ASCII, which is the basic English character set found in most plain-text files.
[=a] 'a' + Macron; [=o] 'o' + Macron; [=e] 'e' + Macron
Editor's note
A macron is a straight horizontal line placed over a vowel to show that it has a long sound, like the long 'a' in 'fate'. Since the actual symbol can't be represented in ASCII, the transcriber uses a bracket-and-equals method — `[=a]` represents 'ā', `[=o]` stands for 'ō', and `[=e]` indicates 'ē'.
[)a] 'a' with a curved line above - like horns. [)e] 'e' with a curved line above - like horns.
Editor's note
The curved line referred to as 'like horns' is called a breve, which indicates a short vowel sound. The bracket-and-parenthesis notation (`[)a]`, `[)e]`) is used in place of 'ă' and 'ĕ' respectively.
[.a] 'a' with a single dot above
Editor's note
A dot placed above a letter is a diacritical mark found in certain phonetic or linguistic notation systems. In this case, `[.a]` stands for 'ȧ'. The note concludes here, implying that it includes all the special characters necessary for the edition's notes.

§04Tone & mood

How this poem feels

This text has a straightforward, technical style. It's neutral and precise, intended to guide readers in understanding typographic conventions without aiming to stir any emotions or create imagery.

§05Symbols & metaphors

Symbols & metaphors

Macron [=]: In this technical context, the macron indicates a long vowel sound. More generally, diacritical marks like this aim to maintain the precise sound and rhythm of a poem when transitioning it from print to digital format.
Breve [)]: The breve indicates a short vowel. Its appearance in the notes to *Evangeline* shows Longfellow's thoughtful application of classical dactylic hexameter, a meter where the length of vowel sounds plays a crucial role.
ASCII encoding conventions: The bracket-based substitution system represents the challenge of converting analogue, printed scholarship into digital plain text while preserving its meaning—a modest yet meaningful act of preservation.

§06Historical context

Historical context

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow released *Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie* in 1847. The poem follows Evangeline Bellefontaine, an Acadian woman who becomes separated from her fiancé Gabriel during the British expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia in 1755. Longfellow employed dactylic hexameter, the same meter used by Homer and Virgil, which requires careful attention to vowel lengths for the poem's rhythm. This note is included in the Project Gutenberg plain-text version of the poem. Founded in 1971, Project Gutenberg digitizes public-domain texts, but earlier plain-text formats were limited in displaying the wide array of typographic characters found in scholarly editions. To address this, the transcriber created a bracket-based shorthand to represent the diacritical marks included in the original edition's pronunciation notes, allowing readers to interpret the phonetic guidance provided by Longfellow's editors.

§07FAQ

Questions readers ask

No. This is a note from a Project Gutenberg digital edition of Longfellow's poem *Evangeline*. It describes how certain typographic characters are shown in plain ASCII text. It doesn't contain any literary content itself.

Citation

Cite this poem

MLA

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. "Special characters." Storgy, https://storgy.com/poems/special-characters-henry-wadsworth-longfellow/.

APA

Longfellow, H. W. (n.d.). Special characters. Storgy. https://storgy.com/poems/special-characters-henry-wadsworth-longfellow/

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