文档介绍：LECTURE FOUR
Philip Freneau
(1752-1832)
’s position in American literature and his major poems:
the most significant poet of the 18th
century America;
the “father of American poetry”;
1
used his poetic talents in the service of a nation struggling for independence, writing verses for the righteous cause of his people and exposing British colonial savageries;
2
the first important poet to turn his eyes to America; almost alone of his generation, he managed to evade the pervasive atmosphere of imitativeness, to see life around directly, and to appreciate the natural scenes on the New Continent and the native Indian civilization
3
social poems and lyrics;
social poems: in them he relentlessly
attacked the British colonial domination
and zealously extolled the American
people who devoted themselves to the
cause of independence, and thus he
was called “the poet of the American
Revolution”;
4
lyrics:
“The Wild Honey Suckle”(1786);
“The Indian Burying Ground”(1787): among the earliest literary works of the idealization of the American Indians, and of the celebration of the “Noble Savage.”
5
"She Dwelt Among Untrodden Ways" by William Wordsworth
She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, Maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love: A violet by a mosy stone Half hidden from the eye! ---Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me!
6
The Wild Honey Suckle
By Philip Freneau
Fair flower, that dost ely grow,
Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
Untouch’d thy honey’d blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet:
No roving foot shall crush thee here,
No busy hand provoke a tear.
7
By Nature’s self in white array’d,
She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
And planted here the guardian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by;
Thus quietly thy summer goes,
Thy days declining to repo