The Satiric Poems of John Trumbull


Book Description

John Trumbull, the colonial American satiric poet, is one of the most readable, and certainly one of the most amusing, of our early men of letters. His poems, with all their wit and bite, bring back to life again the days of the Revolutionary War—powdered wigs, flirting belles, political quarrels, town meetings, brawling mobs, inept generals, flaming national purpose, and all. And if the colonial period seems a long way back in time, his satiric poem on the Progress of Dulness in education will show that time—or at least time in the colleges—has not moved so fast after all. Trumbull's two long poems, so important to the beginnings of America's national poetry and to an understanding of America's literary heritage, were out of print for a number of years and had, in fact, never before been accurately reprinted from the original versions. Here they are available, complete with the original biting prefaces, in a dependable text for the scholar, annotated for the general reader interested in the literature and history of the American eighteenth century. The annotation is inclusive but kept to a minimum.







A Companion to Satire


Book Description

This collection of twenty-nine original essays, surveys satire fromits emergence in Western literature to the present. Tracks satire from its first appearances in the prophetic booksof the Old Testament through the Renaissance and the Englishtradition in satire to Michael Moore’s satirical movieFahrenheit 9/11. Highlights the important influence of the Bible in the literaryand cultural development of Western satire. Focused mainly on major classical and European influences onand works of English satire, but also explores the complex andfertile cultural cross-semination within the tradition of literarysatire.




Satiric Poems


Book Description




Early American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases


Book Description

p.B. J. Whiting savors proverbial expressions and has devoted much of his lifetime to studying and collecting them; no one knows more about British and American proverbs than he. The present volume, based upon writings in British North America from the earliest settlements to approximately 1820, complements his and Archer Taylor's Dictionary of American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, 1820-1880. It differs from that work and from other standard collections, however, in that its sources are primarily not "literary" but instead workaday writings - letters, diaries, histories, travel books, political pamphlets, and the like. The authors represent a wide cross-section of the populace, from scholars and statesmen to farmers, shopkeepers, sailors, and hunters. Mr. Whiting has combed all the obvious sources and hundreds of out-of-the-way publications of local journals and historical societies. This body of material, "because it covers territory that has not been extracted and compiled in a scholarly way before, can justly be said to be the most valuable of all those that Whiting has brought together," according to Albert B. Friedman. "What makes the work important is Whiting's authority: a proverb or proverbial phrase is what BJW thinks is a proverb or proverbial phrase. There is no objective operative definition of any value, no divining rod; his tact, 'feel, ' experience, determine what's the real thing and what is spurious."




The Oxford Handbook of Early American Literature


Book Description

Organized primarily in terms of genre, this handbook includes original research on key concepts, as well as analysis of interesting texts from throughout colonial America. Separate chapters are devoted to literary genres of great importance at the time of their composition that have been neglected in recent decades.




American Literature, 1764-1789


Book Description

The twenty-five years in which the American colonists acquired a sense of nationhood were turbulent, highly spirited, and highly literary. The finest written products of this intellectual surge included not only the fiery pamphlets, broadsides, and newspaper articles of the revolutionists, but also works of prose an poetry, letters, diaries, sermons, and plays.




The Devil and Doctor Dwight


Book Description

At the close of the eighteenth century, Timothy Dwight--poet, clergyman, and, later, president of Yale College--waged a literary and intellectual war against the forces of "infidelity." The Devil and Doctor Dwight reexamines this episode by focusing on The Triumph of Infidelity (1788), the verse satire that launched Dwight's campaign and, Colin Wells argues, the key to recovering the deeper meaning of the threat of infidelity in the early years of the American Republic. The book also features the first modern, annotated edition of this important but long-overlooked poem. Modeled after Alexander Pope's satiric masterpiece, the Dunciad, Dwight's poem took aim at a number of his contemporaries, but its principal target was Congregationalist Charles Chauncy, author of a controversial treatise asserting "the salvation of all men." To Dwight's mind, a belief in universal salvation issued from the same naive faith in innate human virtue and inevitable progress that governed all forms of Enlightenment thought, political as well as religious. Indeed, in subsequent works he traced with increasing dismay a shift in the idea of universal salvation from a theological doctrine to a political belief and symbol of American national identity. In this light, Dwight's campaign against infidelity must also be seen as an early and prescient critique of the ideological underpinnings of Jeffersonian democracy.




The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature


Book Description

The Oxford History of Classical Reception (OHCREL) is designed to offer a comprehensive investigation of the numerous and diverse ways in which literary texts of the classical world have stimulated responses and refashioning by English writers. Covering the full range of English literature from the early Middle Ages to the present day, OHCREL both synthesizes existing scholarship and presents cutting-edge new research, employing an international team of expert contributors for each of the five volumes. OHCREL endeavours to interrogate, rather than inertly reiterate, conventional assumptions about literary 'periods', the processes of canon-formation, and the relations between literary and non-literary discourse. It conceives of 'reception' as a complex process of dialogic exchange and, rather than offering large cultural generalizations, it engages in close critical analysis of literary texts. It explores in detail the ways in which English writers' engagement with classical literature casts as much light on the classical originals as it does on the English writers' own cultural context. This fourth volume, and second to appear in the series, covers the years 1790-1880 and explores romantic and Victorian receptions of the classics. Noting the changing fortunes of particular classical authors and the influence of developments in archaeology, aesthetics and education, it traces the interplay between classical and nineteenth-century perceptions of gender, class, religion, and the politics of republic and empire in chapters engaging with many of the major writers of this period.







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