Chroniclers of Acadian letters mention Father Napoléon-P. Landry's poetic attempts for the completeness of the historical record and for the particular documentary value of his two volumes (preparation of a third was interrupted by his death). Together with the long-since-forgotten creative endeavors of many others, Landry's books mark one of the points on which an Acadian literary tradition has rather tenuously been made to rest. His life roughly spanned the First Acadian Renaissance, an era of national awakening ushered in at the first Acadian Convention (Memramcook, New Brunswick, 1881) and characterized by countless initiatives aimed at affirming at last, one hundred years after the return from exile, the people's collective identity.

Landry's primary role in this era of national self-definition was that of a spiritual leader. For forty years he served his fellow Acadians in that capacity, and he was affectionately known among them as Le P...