Chapter 14 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine(then still a part of Massachusetts), the second of eight children. Both of his parents encouraged his early interest in reading and writing. Longfellow was the most beloved American poet of the nineteenth century. As literary modernism took hold in the twentieth century, Longfellow came to be seen as an unadventurous, timid poet, but such an assessment unfairly diminishes the achievement of a writer who saw value in working with (rather than against) established forms and traditions. Viewed in relation to his own culture and his own poetic aspirations, Longfellow exhibited a metrical complexity, a mastery of sound and atmosphere, a progressive social conscience, and a melancholy outlook that belied his persona as a soothing white-bearded fireside poet. In his own time, Longfellow was as popular for the challenges he posed to his reading public as for his poetic reassurances.
Critical Perspectives
1.Cultural Study
John Morton, in “Longfellow, Tennyson, and Transatlantic Celebrity”, explores the celebrity culture and lion-hunting associated with Alfred Tennyson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, argues that while both poets experienced enormous literary fame during their lifetimes, the celebrity culture surrounding them might have been a motivating factor in their subsequent decline in popularity, and the Modernist depreciation of nineteenth-century poetry. Exploring the ways in which Longfellow courted celebrity culture, the article turns to the lion-hunting exploits of Edward Bok, a Dutch-American magazine editor, to demonstrate the desire of Longfellow’s readers to physically encounter him. Examining the intense media coverage attending Longfellow’s travels to Britain in 1868-1869, the article underlines his status as the ultimate American literary celebrity of the period, but also positions Longfellow as a “lion-hunter” by focusing on his meeting with Tennyson on the Isle of Wight in 1868, and on the way in which their encounters in person and in print reveal contrasting attitudes to celebrity.[1]
Andrew C. Higgins, in “Evangeline’s Mission: Anti-Catholicism, Nativism, and Unitarianism in Longfellow’s Evangeline”, argues that though Evangeline has long been considered simply a love story, this article reads the poem as one deeply involved in both the theological and cultural struggles between the Catholic and Protestant churches in the antebellum period. The essay argues that Longfellow’s poem about the Acadian Expulsion of 1755 imagines those Catholic refugees as successful immigrants to America. Further, the article argues that Longfellow’s vision of Philadelphia at the end of the poem is that of an ideal, ecumenical Christian community, in which Catholicism is able to coexist with various Protestant churches. Thus the poem counters anti-Catholic nativist rhetoric that portrayed Catholics as fundamentally foreign and a threat to the Republic. However, the ecumenical nature of this vision is limited by the fact that Longfellow cannot imagine a fully-realized Catholic Church in the United States; his Catholic community lacks ecclesiastical hierarchy. As such, it reflects Longfellow’s connection to the Unitarian Moralists, as group of Harvard Unitarians who sought to transform other denominations rather than to convert individuals to Unitarianism.[2]
2.Canonization Study
Lloyd Willis, in “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, United States National Literature, and the Canonical Erasure of Material Nature”, discusses the views of authors and literary critics George Santayana and Van Wyck Brooks on the works and literary manifestos of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the impact of Longfellow’s removal from the U.S. literary canon on the U.S. literature. Longfellow had envisioned an environmentally determined national literature. He believed that any national literature would have to base its claims of vitality and originality on the qualities of its natural environment. For Santayana and Brooks, Longfellow’s literary manifestos were unimportant and his vision of trans-Atlantic literary unity seemed weak-minded and unimaginative.[3]
Nicholas A. Basbanes, in “Famous Once Again”, looks at poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. According to Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Longfellow did as much as any author or politician of his time to shape the way 19th-century Americans saw themselves, their nation, and their past. To commemorate Longfellow’s 200th birthday during February 2007 the U.S. Postal Service has issued a commemorative stamp. A Library of America edition of his selected writings, published in 2000, has gone through four printings. The article discusses Longfellow’s wife Fanny Appleton, his published works, including Evangeline, and his popularity.[4]
Joseph C. Murphy, in “Ántonia and Hiawatha: Spectacles of the Nation”, presents on the childhood recital of Willa Cather of the poem Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Topics include the impact of Longfellow on Cather, Cather’s enthusiasm for Longfellow which prompted her to absorbed Longfellow’s verse in some of her characters and Cather’s novel My Ántonia which is conceived as a template for Americanization and American identity.[5]
3.New Historicism
Agnieszka Salska, in “From National to Supranational Conception of Literature: the Case of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”, discusses the life and works of author and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and traces the evolution of his poetic program away from the assertive nationalism of his youth to the firm universalism of his late years. Longfellow withdrew in the 1860s from the immediate cultural concerns in the U.S. to commune with the supranational ideal of art. He paid little attention to his national mission in the poems he published during and following the Civil War. His late works emphasize the inner life of the artist, his uneasy relation to the world and his struggle against time and oblivion. He also moved from the folk-inspired ballad and narrative tale to the more exclusive poetic drama.[6]
Mark Niemeyer, in “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie and the Ambiguous Afterlife of the History of the Acadians”, argues that Longfellow’s Evangeline was hailed as a great and distinctively American work when it appeared in 1847, and the poem’s use of North American history was a key element in its favourable reception. This use of history, however, is ambiguous and complex. The epic continues, first of all, in a long tradition of romanticized retellings of the heart-rending story of the Acadians. But the work also engages in a dual-level dialogue with both the mid-eighteenth-century history of the Acadians, who are pitied, without inciting indignation, and the contemporary history of midnineteenth-century America, whose expansionism it both implicitly celebrates and criticizes.[7]
David Haven Blake, in “Among the English Worthies: Longfellow and the Campaign for Poets’ Corner”, argues that in 1884, a bust of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was unveiled in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey, positioning the American between memorials to Geoffrey Chaucer and John Dryden. Longfellow was the first foreign author thus honoured, and his selection created transatlantic controversy. Through newspapers and correspondence, this article explores how Longfellow’s bust came to be in Poets’ Corner, tracing the role of its organizer, Dr. William Cox Bennett, his benefactors in government and the Palace, and a host of distinguished contributors to the campaign. While nineteenth-century celebrity is often described as a public phenomenon accompanied by crowds of cheering admirers, the memorialization campaign centred on transatlantic elites who praised Longfellow’s virtue, humility, and internationalism. The article examines how the campaign shaped the meaning of both Poets’ Corner and late nineteenth-century transatlantic fraternity and argues that it also became the setting for conflicting ideas about literature, cosmopolitanism, national memory, and Victorian racial theories.[8]
Stephen Harrigan, in “House of Fatherly Dreams”, discusses the historic home of 19th-century U.S. author Henry Wadsworth Longfellow located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Stephen explains how the home was once used as the headquarters of U.S. General and future President George Washington for a period during the American Revolution. He notes his experience taking a tour of the house. Also discussed is the death of Longfellow’s wife, Fanny Appleton Longfellow, in the house due to a fire, Longfellow’s depressive nature, and his various travels throughout Europe. Focus is given to the design of the house’s study.[9]
Jill Lepore, in “How Longfellow Woke the Dead”, argues that when first published 150 years ago, his famous poem about Paul Revere was read as a bold statement of his opposition to slavery. The contemporary reception of the poem Paul Revere’s Ride, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, first published in the January 1861 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. It considers the lifelong friendship between Longfellow and eventual senator and abolitionist Charles Sumner, who met in 1837 when both men where teaching at Harvard University and maintained an active correspondence when separated. Also considered are Longfellow’s reactions to events such as the Fugitive Slave Act, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dredd Scott decision, and John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia.[10](https://www.daowen.com)
4.Comparative Study
Angus Fletcher, in “Whitman and Longfellow: Two Types of the American Poet”, compares the styles of the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Walt Whitman; historical position in American literary esteem; Whitman’s art of syntactic manipulation; Longfellow’s art of poetic reciprocation; establishment of art of liminal poetics.[11]
【注释】
[1]Morton J. “Longfellow, Tennyson, and Transatlantic Celebrity”. Critical Survey, 2015, 27(3):6-23.
[2]Higgins A C. “Evangeline’s Mission: Anti-Catholicism, Nativism, and Unitarianism in Longfellow’s Evangeline”. Religion ＆ the Arts, 2009, 13(4):547-568.
[3]Willis L. “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, United States National Literature, and the Canonical Erasure of Material Nature”. ATQ, 2006, 20(4):629-646.
[4]Basbanes N A. “Famous Once Again”. Smithsonian, 2007, 37(11):96-103.
[5]Murphy J C. “Ántonia and Hiawatha: Spectacles of the Nation”. Cather Studies 2017, 11:64-90.
[6]Salska A.“From National to Supranational Conception of Literature: the Case of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”. ATQ, 2006, 20(4):611-628.
[7]Niemeyer M. “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie and the Ambiguous Afterlife of the History of the Acadians”.Canadian Review of American Studies, 2018, 48(2):121-145.
[8]Blake D H. “Among the English Worthies: Longfellow and the Campaign for Poets’ Corner”. Critical Survey, 2015, 27(3):82-104.
[9]Harrigan S. “House of Fatherly Dreams”. American History, 2013, 48(2):54-61.
[10]Lepore J. “How Longfellow Woke the Dead”. American Scholar, 2011, 80(2):33-46.
[11]Fletcher A. “Whitman and Longfellow: Two Types of the American Poet”. Raritan, 1991, 10(4):131.