Longfellow&#039;s Imaginative Engagement: The Works of His Late Career

Jeffrey Hotz

doi:10.5771/9781611477764

Summary

Longfellow’s Imaginative Engagement is a first-of-its-kind study of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s late-career poems and biography from 1861 until 1882, covering the poet’s posthumous publications and the handling of his literary estate. Using never-before-discussed archival materials from Harvard’s Houghton Library and the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, including unpublished poems and poem fragments, this literary biography presents Longfellow’s vibrant and complex final two decades. After the tragic death of his beloved second wife, Frances (Fanny) Elizabeth Appleton, Longfellow reinvented himself as a creative artist, transforming his loss and the nation’s suffering in the Civil War and postwar period into compelling art. In this book, Jeffrey Hotz interprets the distinct phases of Longfellow’s late career, exploring his narrative poetry, translations, personal lyrics, religious poetry, aesthetic verse, and end-of-life vision of mortality as a journey. He considers Longfellow’s friendships and family life, publication strategies and literary reputation, and the recurrent theme of longing for an ideal female figure in his poems and private life. Interweaving unpublished poems and poem fragments with interpretations of published collections, Longfellow’s Imaginative Engagement examines the poet’s complex voice, which captured the public’s imagination, making him America’s most famous poet in the nineteenth century.

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Bibliographic data

Edition: 1/2022
Copyright year: 2022
ISBN-Print: 978-1-61147-775-7
ISBN-Online: 978-1-61147-776-4
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 586
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. A Note on Quotations No access
3. Acknowledgments No access
Introduction No access Pages 1 - 46
1. Pursuing Successful Publication Because of Personal and National Tragedy No access
2. Narratives of Recuperation and Loss in Tales of a Wayside Inn No access
1. The Divine Comedy Translation No access
2. Ideals of Completion and Unity No access
3. The New England Tragedies and the Restless Yearning for Feminist Ideals No access
1. Anxiety about Personal Faith in Public Art No access
2. Christianity as an Incomplete Project No access
3. Continuities and Collisions of Faith No access
1. New Directions No access
2. Aftermath and the Arts of Personal Disclosure and Desire No access
3. The Imperatives of Love and the Beautiful in The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems No access
1. Preparing for Charted and Uncharted Journeys No access
2. The Aesthetic World and the Inner Self No access
3. Ultima Thule as the Final Spiritual and Artistic Journey No access
1. After March 24, 1882 No access
2. Visions of the Multiverse No access
Epilogue No access Pages 507 - 536
Appendix No access Pages 537 - 540
Bibliography No access Pages 541 - 564
General Index No access Pages 565 - 574
Published Poem Index No access Pages 575 - 580
Unpublished Poem and Poem Fragment Index No access Pages 581 - 582
Short Translated Poem Index No access Pages 583 - 584
About the Author No access Pages 585 - 586