Biography

Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, and educated at Bowdoin College. Though his father hoped his son would become a lawyer, Longfellow proved such an excellent student of languages that Bowdoin hired him as its first professor of modern languages. In 1836 he moved to Harvard, where he taught European literatures of many different periods and created an important anthology, The Poets and Poetry of Europe (1845), that helped make European poetry accessible to the general American public. In his own poetry, Longfellow followed the examples of these European styles, transforming classical Greek or Finnish folk meters into his own truly American creations. Longfellow's second wife, Fanny Appleton, was a Boston heiress whose money allowed the couple to live in relative sumptuousness. When Fanny was fatally burned in 1861, Longfellow turned in his despair to translating Dante's Divine Comedy. At his death, Longfellow was the most popular and beloved poet of his time.

Explorations

By the middle of the nineteenth century, Longfellow was one of the most popular poets writing in English; but as a professor, a scholar, and an American "bard" in an Emersonian sense, he aspired to provide intellectual and cultural leadership, not pander to the public. Deeply learned in the classical languages, Longfellow believed that the new nation needed a poet who could express collective aspirations, help lay claim to a heroic past, and affirm our place in this landscape. Much of his poetry reveals those values and intentions.

1. The Slave's Dream (1842) and The Jewish Cemetery at Newport (1854) are both about the lives and values of "others" -- people envisioned as out beyond or alien to the culture and values of Longfellow's intended audience. These alien dead may be invoked, in other words, as vicarious experiences or lessons for a white Christian audience. Where do you see these subjects portrayed with individuality and a measure of understanding? Where do you see archetypes or stereotypes -- and what might be the intention of that stereotyping?

2. Compare the final stanzas of The Slave's Dream and The Jewish Cemetery at Newport as meditations on death and on the meaning of the life or lives ended. What are the consolations for the dead? How do we reconcile the mood and theme of these final stanzas with the theme of the opening two stanzas of A Psalm of Life (1838)?

3. The most famous metaphor in A Psalm of Life is in stanza VII, about "Footsteps on the sands of time." Is this metaphor about lasting effect? About futility? Is a life "sublime" in an aesthetic sense? A moral or spiritual sense? If the poem supposedly comes from "the Heart of the Young Man," is there a philosophical premise supporting it? In other words, where does this idea about "life" come from or find its validation?

Other sites to consult:

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: American Poet, Educator, Linguist. Includes a number of online poems, a biography, and information about the cities where the poet lived.
• The New England Renaissance. Scroll down the page to access a two-part biography and analyses of different aspects of Longfellow's works.