ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the cultural imaginary that brings together the story of Evangeline, the heroine of Longfellow's poem and the realm of tourism. In the Canadian Maritimes, and to a lesser extent in Louisiana, one is surrounded by Evangeline's name and image. The long narrative poem Evangeline A Tale of Acadie was published in 1847, written in English by the eminent American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who had never set foot in Acadia. Besides becoming a paramount symbol for Acadians themselves, the poem's popularity in the English-speaking world also turned Evangeline into a symbol of Acadia to outsiders. In Canada and Louisiana Evangeline certainly refers back to an imaginary of a past Acadian Golden Age as first presented in Longfellow's poem. The unfolding of Evangeline's story reminds us that tourism is rarely 'merely' or 'just' about tourism, but in fact is constantly imagined and reimagined as part of a complex cultural web.
