Marcel Dugas
Marcel Dugas was a Canadian poet and essayist born in 1883 in Saint-Jacques-de-L'Achigan, Montcalm, Canada. He pursued his education at Séminaire de Joliette and Collège de l'Assomption, earning his baccalaureate in 1906 before studying law at Laval University, where he began writing. Dugas moved to Paris in 1910, studying at the Sorbonne and contributing to various literary journals, including L'Action and Le Nigog. He authored significant works, such as "La Littérature canadienne" in 1929 and an authoritative study on poet Louis Fréchette in 1934. Dugas's literary career was marked by a tension between his Modernist beliefs and his traditional poetic style, leading to a complex legacy as he divided his time between Canada and France. Despite not producing a cohesive body of work, his later poetry and prose were noted for their modernist qualities infused with Romantic themes. Dugas passed away in Quebec in 1947, leaving behind a nuanced but fragmented literary legacy.
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Subject Terms
Marcel Dugas
Writer
- Born: September 3, 1883
- Birthplace: Saint-Jacques-de-L'Achigan, Quebec, Canada
- Died: January 7, 1947
- Place of death: Quebec, Canada
Biography
Poet and essayist Marcel Dugas was born in 1883 in Saint- Jacques-de-L’Achigan, Montcalm, Canada. He attended Séminaire de Joliette and Collège de l’Assomption, where he earned his baccalaureate in 1906. He eventually ventured to Laval University law school, where he first started writing as a hobby. Starting in 1910 he studied at the Sorbonne in Paris after an unexpected move to the European continent. He published extensively in the journals L’Action, Le Pays, and Le Nigog. Dugas wrote La Littérature canadienne in 1929, and in 1934 he published Un Romantique canadien: Louis Fréchette, 1839-1908, an authoritative study of poet Louis Fréchette.
Dugas was a very conflicted literary figure who criticized Quebec literature as a staunch proponent of Modernism but who also wrote poetry in the old fashion rather than the new. His legacy is quite murky because he also divided his career between Canada and France and left behind no large unified work in either locale. However, later in life, especially after he returned to Quebec in the wake of Germany’s conquest of France in the early 1940’s, Dugas did manage to put forth modernist poetry and prose that has been highly regarded by some literary critics for its inclusion of Romantic themes. Dugas died in 1947 in Quebec at the age of sixty-three.