Transnational Longfellow: A Project of American National Poetry

This study marks a decisive advance in Longfellow studies. Instead of making do with documenting the poet’s literary contacts in a biographical context, as has been the custom in the past, the authors inquire into the uses he made of European works for the English-American literature in the making. Focusing on Longfellow’s widely famous poem, Evangeline, and the internationally most ambitious poet’s anthology, Tales of a Wayside Inn, they demonstrate that the poet-professor’s program and practice of an integrative, transnational American poetry that includes translations adapts the model that the Schlegel Brothers recommended for German literature - a cultural late-comer as was that of the U.S.A. In the process, they identify a number of correlative works so far overlooked.