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Biography
Bryant was born in the backwoods of Massachusetts and raised
by a strict Calvinist father. Under the influence of the
British "graveyard poets" and William Wordsworth, who celebrated
the majesty of nature, Bryant wrote the first draft of Thanatopsis in
1813 or 1814. This poem won him immediate acclaim when he
first published it in 1817. Unfortunately, the life of a
poet was not a practical possibility for the young Bryant.
He worked as a lawyer and a justice of the peace in Massachusetts
until he followed his literary dreams and moved his family
to New York City. In New York Bryant began a long and distinguished
career in magazine publishing, first as an editor at the New
York Review and Atheneum Magazine and then most significantly
as editor-in-chief at the Evening Post. His editorials
in the Evening Post, focusing on the political events
of the day, helped make his newspaper one of the most respected
in the country. Later, when Bryant was in his seventies,
he completed verse translations of both the Iliad (1870)
and the Odyssey (1872) and printed his collected Poems in
1876.
Explorations
Thanatopsis (1821) and The Prairies (1832)
are two of Bryant's best-remembered poems; they are works
that make him an exemplary figure in the American Romantic
tradition. We see here a dramatic change in the verse being
written in the United States -- in how it sounds, in how
it moves from one perception to the next, in how it is heard
by the reader, and in how it implicitly defines the role
of the poet. 1. Thanatopsis is an elegy -- and if you have
read other elegies, you know that the conventions of the
elegy require it to move from grief into consolation, to
come out of the darkness and away from the pain. Bryant
gives us an elegy for all of humankind, for all living
things. But this also sounds like a soliloquy, like
a speech from a Shakespearean protagonist, off by himself
or herself, thinking aloud about the human condition. What
lines in the poem strike you as sounding especially Shakespearean?
Do particular heroes from Shakespeare come to mind? Why?
How does this poem find its way out of melancholy? By logic?
By intuition? Where does the mood change, and how does
it change?
2. The early nineteenth century was an era when landscape
painting favored the vast canvas, the panoramic scene,
the wild, dark, windswept landscape, and a portentous sky.
The cover of NAAL, volume 1, shows such a painting,
by Asher Durand -- in fact, the two figures on the rock
in the middle distance are Bryant and the American Romantic
painter Thomas Cole. Reconsider Thanatopsis as a
visual experience. Where do you see painterly moments in
the poem?
3. In The Prairies Bryant takes on the role of
bard -- a poet who in imaginative ecstasy tells or constructs
the history of a people and who connects the present to
a heroic past. At this point (Bryant wrote the poem in
1833), no one in America understood the cultures of the
Moundbuilders, and Bryant turns to his intuition and his
own cultural experiences to create a tale and redeem these
monuments from anonymity. Describe his reverie. What heroic
tradition and works does he draw upon? Why does he invent
a "last survivor" for the Moundbuilders and imagine him
intermarrying with the conquerors?
Other sites to consult:
Poetry
of William Cullen Bryant. Professor Ann Woodlief's
site allows students to examine four poems by Bryant.
Includes a detailed biography of Bryant, copious
notes and study questions, and links to other Bryant-related
sites.
William
Cullen Bryant hymns. Read Bryant's hymns
with musical accompaniment.
http://www.nagasaki-gaigo.ac.jp/ishikawa/amlit/b/bryant19ro.htm:
A brief biography with extensive links and online text
resources.
http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap3/bryant.html:
PAL site, Chapter 3.
http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/brady/gallery/70gal.html:
A photograph of Bryant from the Smithsonian’s National
Portrait Gallery.
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