The Poet and the Philanthropists: William Chapman's Aspirational Bid for the Nobel Prize

Abstract

French Canadian poet William Chapman is generally dismissed as second-rate imitator of Lamartine, Hugo or his compatriot Louis Fréchette. Chapman's bitter feud with Fréchette has been – much more than the five collections of verse he published between 1876 and 1912 – his claim to fame. Despite being at odds with his North American contemporaries, Chapman was indefatigable in his pursuit of literary prestige. Chapman's quest for literary honours including the Nobel Prize, while it has thus far attracted the derision of critics, in fact provides context for a deeper understanding of his poetic practice within the shifting philanthropic landscape of the turn of the century. Close readings of two of Chapman's poems, ‘À M. Andrew Carnegie’ and ‘Nobel’, alongside contemporary journalistic sources, point to a new understanding of Chapman's considerable body of occasional verse and of Chapman himself as a savvy professional attuned to the developing ‘economy of prestige’.