Barlow, Joel. (1754 - 1812).
L i f e
- born in Connectitut
- received university education (Yale)
- became an army chaplain to have leisure for writing poetry, then a businessman in France, and finally a consul for US
W o r k
- his early opinions conventional enough to qualify him as one of the Hartford Wits
x but: radicalised by his experience of the French Revolution
- his later works depart from the spirit of his formerly fellow Wits
The Anarchiad: A New England Poem (1786 – 87):
- a major contributor to the Hartford Wits satirical poem
The Vision of Columbus (1786):
- an American epic, famous both in America and Europe
The Columbiad (1807):
- a later revised version of The Vision
Advice to the Privileged Orders (1792):
- his own experience of living through the events of the French Revolution as a friend of T. Paine and a honorary French citizen
- similar in tone to T. Paine’s Rights of Man
“Hasty Pudding” (1796):
- commemorates his contented exile years as a consul
Quote
"No Raven’s wing can stretch the flight so far / As the torn bandrols of Napoleon’s war. / Choose then your climate, fix your best abode, / He’ll make you deserts and he’ll bring you blood".
From "Advice to a Raven in Russia" (1812).
Basics
(Picture: Wikimedia Commons).
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Author
Joel Barlow. (1754 - 1812). American. -
Work
Poet. Member of the Connectitut Wits. -
Genres
Political verse. Satire.
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.
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.