Writing Assignment - 2 Parts

Five Really Important Poets of the 1800s

· Washington Irving,

· “Rip van Winkle,”

· "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,"

· "Thanatopsis," William Cullen Bryant,

· Poems, Lydia Sigourney,

· "Death of an Infant,"

· "To the First Slave Ship,"

· “Indian Names,”

· "Fallen Forests,"

· Poems, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,

· "A Psalm of Life,"

· "My Lost Youth,"

· John Greenleaf Whittier, p 583-4; "Snow Bound: A Winter Idyll,"

· Edgar Allan Poe, pp 604-8:

· "The Fall of the House of Usher,"

· "Sonnet - To Science,"

· "The Raven,"

· “Annabel Lee,”

This Unit we read five really important poets of the 1800's, all of whom were very influential before the Civil war.

Lydia Sigourney is little known today, but in her day she was the most popular woman poet in America. She writes, like Longfellow and Whittier, in the Romantic tradition of poetry, and we can easily see these elements in her poems. In addition, Sigourney continues the "tradition" of contemplative, personal poetry by women in American literary history.

Easily the most popular poet of the first part of the 19th century, Longfellow is not very popular today for a number of reasons. One is that his work is not very politically correct by many modern academic standards: his subjects, his attitudes, and his assumptions are not generally shared by many modern thinkers and readers. Another reason for his unpopularity is that his work sometimes is accused of becoming overly sentimental and simplistic, again by modern standards. In reality then, his work is not popular simply because reader's tastes have changed; readers today don't value many of the elements that caused his popularity in his day. Still, any survey of American literary history would be incomplete without looking at Longfellow.

Similarly, Whittier is also one of the important and popular writers of the early 1800's who is almost unknown in the modern day, again because of the changing literary tastes of America. However, as the selection in this Unit shows, his interest were very profoundly American and domestic, and his relation of everyday experience gives modern readers a sense of what life was like 200 years ago.

Most American readers know Poe and have read his poems, particularly "The Raven," before. This poem consistently ranks as one of the "American Classics," but Poe is probably more popular today for his stories. Poe writes traditional "lyric" poems which are most common among the Romantic writers.

Finally, there's Bryant, who is not very well known today at all. But he is not only an important poet of his day, he was also an important classical scholar, and also the leading literary critic of the day. He is an important leaders in the "Young America" movement. In his essays about Literature and Democracy, he argues the need to establish a "new" American literary tradition, one that is separate from the European tradition. He inspired writers and artists (like Whitman) to attempt this feat.

Here are some questions to explore and reply to...

· Review the study sheet on Romanticism, and read the entry in the Glossary. What elements of Romantic literary tradition can you spot in works by these writers?

· Romantic writers view Nature differently than did earlier writers and thinkers. In Romantic thinking, Nature is a source of goodness and purity, and represent innocence. Nature, and that which is "natural" is "better" than that which is "man-made". Thus, Romantic writers also tended to "idealize" primitive societies, and because they were "closer to nature". Where can we see these ideas in the poems by these writers? can you find examples?

· A person could argue that, in many ways, Sigourney is the most "modern" of all the writers we have looked at so far. In what ways might this claim be true? In which ways would it not hold up?

· Discuss how the poem "My Lost Youth," can be seen as either an honest expression of longing and human emotion or as an overly sentimental and simplistic. Which way do you think about this poem?

· Discuss how the poem "A Psalm of Life," can be viewed as a truthful expression of the writers belief or as a trite repetition of shallow homilies. What do you think of the poem?

· What about the poem, "A Winter Idyll"? What is an "idyll"? In what was does the poem reflect a nostalgic, sentimental, or Romantic view of American life? Explain why

· Compare Sigourney's poetry to that of Bradstreet: what similarities can you notice between them, such as topic or style? In what ways are they different?