Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. (1807 - 1882).
L i f e
- received university education in Europe
- became a scholar, professor of modern languages at Harvard
- became one of the intellectual triumvirate based in Boston including also J. R. Lowell and O. W. Holmes
- his lifetime: very popular, spoke directly to the hearts of ordinary Americans, said exactly what they wanted to hear x now: not so much appreciated
W o r k
- poet, scholar, and lecturer
F i c t i o n :
Hyperion (1839):
- an early prose romance, models the female protagonist after his wife
P o e t r y :
- a learned scholar: contributed to the emergence of national poetry with native topics and events
- created a new body of romantic American legends: made American history exciting, hard to resist
- wrote verse of genuine musical quality: sentimental, simple, and often moralising
- never surprised or shocked, used safe forms, and calm, clear voice
- introduced European forms to American poetry
(a) Long Narrative Poems:
- achieved great fame with these
- used unusual ‘antique’ rhythms to weave the myths of the American past
Evangeline (1847)
Hiawatha (1855)
The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)
(b) Shorter Poems:
“Excelsior”, “A Psalm of Life”, “My Lost Youth”, “Fata Morgana”, “Mezzo Cammin”, “The Children’s Hour”, “The Day is Done”, “The Slave’s Dream”
(c) Collections:
Voices of the Night (1839)
Ballads and Other Poems (1841)
Poems on Slavery (1842)
T r a n s l a t i o n s :
- a poetic transl. of Dante’s Divine Comedy (1867): contributed with a sequence of 6 outstanding sonnets
Basics
(Photo: Julia Margaret Cameron. 1868. Source: Wikimedia Commons).
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Author
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (1807 - 1882). American. -
Work
Poet. Author of Hiawatha (1855). -
Genre
Romanticism. Historicism. Abolitionism.
Literature
Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995.
Bercovitch, Sacvan, ed. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Cunliffe, Marcus. The Literature of the United States. London: Penguin, 1991.
Lauter, Paul, ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1994.
McQuade, Donald, gen.ed. The Harper American Literature. New York: Harper & Collins, 1996.
Ruland, Richard, Malcolm Bradbury. Od puritanismu k postmodernismu. Praha: Mladá fronta, 1997.
Vančura, Zdeněk, ed. Slovník spisovatelů: Spojené státy americké. Praha: Odeon, 1979.
Quote
"Life is real! Life is earnest! / And the grave is not its goal; / Dust thou art, to dust returnest, / Was not spoken of the soul".
From "A Psalm of Life".