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Show 80 Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters From a kingdom that bullies, and hectors, and swears, We.. send up to heaven our wishes and prayers That we, disunited, may freemen be still, And Britain go on-e-to be damned if she will. Did Freneau see himself as a "Poet of the Revolution?" One popular bioqrapher'" pleads that he even looked upon the American Revolution as his own war, bred and born of his own efforts. But Professor Harry Hayden Clark thinks there is evi dence "that Freneau was himself half ashamed of the so called satires which have led some scholars to see him only as "The Poet of the Revolution,' and that he turned to this 'applied poetry' only "18 because it was demanded .... ... Most of the evidence indicates that before it was thrust hi in 1778, Freneau was not wholly devoted to the war. He was simply a young man of poetic talent who happened to live in colonial America on the eve of a revolution. He wrote poems like the facetious "Expedition of Timothy Taurus" (August 1775) which would seem strangely inconsistent with his so called obsession for liberty-e-lf he had such an obsession. When he could draw fuel for his poetic imagination from the details of contemporary struggle, he did so; he was sensitive to public opinion. But when he could not, he wrote verses anyway. upon .... It is logical to conclude, therefore, that in 1775 Freneau was the effective propagandist that he has been called, or that he later became. He had' a working knowledge of the best tech niques of propaganda, but he lacked both the conviction and the force necessary to give this early work real significance. not .... BIBLIOGRAPHY , . Angoff, Charles A., A Literary History People, II. New York: Tudor Publishing of the American Company" 1935. Austin, Mary S., Philip Freneeu, the Poet- of the Revolu tion. New York: A. Wessels Company, 1901. .... ' Calverton, V. F., "Philip Freneau, Apostle of Liberty," The Modern Monthlq, III, 543 (Oct., 1933). Clark, Harry Hayden, "That Rascal Freneau," (a book review) in American Literature, XIV, 82 84 (-March, 1942). .... Clark, Harry Hayden. "What Made Freneau the Father of American Poetry," Studies in Philology, XXVI, No.1, pp. J 16; .... ,. " ,: 17Emma Gelders Sterne. in her Drums of Monmouth. 18r.lfY:)' f:JP.y'qri ,;9rk;? frenau> Fatet', A1i?erian Poetry. Studies in Phllo[ogy, '}Mhiat VoL·26, N,e;:i, p.d:6. i·'i/'.::J f.om 0 1:,:1 "",,', [oJ Mad the ; of," ' ,I' v. |
