Savard, Félix-Antoine (1896-1982). Canadian priest and writer whose Menaud, Maître-draveur (1937), overtly inspired by Hémon's Maria Chapdelaine, is a major work of Quebec literary nationalism. It was Savard who, by making the venerable logger Menaud meditate on the dream voice which spoke to Maria Chapdelaine against the domination of French Canada by anglophones, gave Hémon's work the political resonance it now enjoys within the nationalist tradition. The lyrical qualities of Savard's style, his constant appeal to the beauties of nature, the simplicity of his peasant characters, and the artlessness of his narrative convincingly naturalized the political message as the expression of perennial human values. The same model was to be followed by many other writers, even as late in the century as Roch Carrier.
None of Savard's other works achieve the mythic power of Menaud. The most considerable, L'Abatis (1943) and Le Barachois (1959), express his romantic naturalism in the form of short poetic and evocative prose pieces. The latter has the extra interest of offering documentary glimpses of the colonization movement of the 1930s—a Church-led project aimed at combating unemployment and preserving the traditional rural way of life of French Canada by opening up new farmlands in the inhospitable north of Quebec—in which Savard played a leading role as a socially committed priest.
[Ian Lockerbie]
