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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Driven by a spirit of nationalism and romanticism and stimulated by certain literary sources, many of North America's first poets, those of the revolutionary, national, and early romantic periods of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (until ca. 1830) sought inspiration in the Hispanic world. There they found some seven themes for verses, which today, with the possible exception of Freneau's and Bryant's, may seem of questionable aesthetic value. But because of these poets' interpretation of and surprisingly great concern for things Spanish, their works are of considerable historical interest.
1 1830 is a generally accepted closing date for the first period of North American literature. For novels, it is used by Loshe, L. D., The Early American Novel (New York, 1907),Google Scholar and Wegelin, Oscar, Early American Fiction, 1774–1830 (3d ed.; New York, 1929).Google Scholar For dramas, it is used by Hill, Frank P., who, in American Plays, Printed 1714–1830 (Stanford University, California, 1934), p. vi,Google Scholar writes: “The closing date was chosen by Wegelin, accepted by Fred W. Atkinson, and adopted by Charles Frederic Brede, in his The German Drama in English on the Philadelphia Stage from 1794 to 1830, Furthermore, Robert F. Roden takes 1831 as the beginning date of his Later American Plays, which he says ‘is practically a second part’ of Wegelin.”
2 The Columbiad (Philadelphia, 1807), p. 22.
3 See The Literature of the American People, ed. Quinn, Arthur H. (New York, 1951), p. 175:Google Scholar “In the period between the close of the Revolutionary War and the early years of the nineteenth century, we see in our literature as its first prevailing characteristic a distinctly national note. This was due of course to the pride which all felt in the new nation and was manifested in literature principally in a choice of American subject and a desire to represent America as the fruition of the design of creation, as something to which the history of the world had been pointing for all time.”
4 Howard, Leon, The Connecticut Wits (Chicago, 1943), p. 139.Google Scholar
5 Zunder, Theodore A., The Early Days of Joel Barlow (New Haven, 1934), p. 220.Google Scholar See also my “William Robertson’s Influence on Early American Fiction,” The Americas, XIV, no. 1 (July, 1957), 37–43.
6 The Poems of Philiip Freneau, ed. Pattee, F. L. (Princeton, 1907), 1, 165.Google Scholar
7 The Vision of Cortes, Cain and other poems (Charleston, S.C, 1829), p. 150n.
8 Zunder, op. cit., p. 87.
9 Pattee, op. cit., p. 165 n.
10 Beatty, Joseph M. Jr., “Churchill and Freneau,” American Literature, 2 (1930), 121–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 See Peterson, R. M., “Bryant as Hispanophile,” Hispania, 16 (1933), 401–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 The Last Poems of Philip Freneau, ed. Leary, Lewis (New Brunswick, 1945), p. 15.Google Scholar
13 Zander, op. cit., p. 207.
14 Simms, op. cit., p. 148 n.
15 See Chinard, Gilbert, L’Amérique et le rêve exotique (Paris, 1934),Google Scholar and Hanke, Lewis, The First Social Experiments in America (Cambridge, Mass., 1935).Google Scholar
16 Howard, op. cit., pp. 148–149.
17 The Vision of Columbus (Hartford, 1787), p. 68 n.
18 Howard, op. cit., pp. 146, 149; Zunder, op. cit., pp. 220–221; and Smith, W. P., “Account of Mr. Joel Barlow, An American Poet,” The Monthly Magazine, and British Register, 6 (1798), 251.Google Scholar
19 Wendell, Barrett, A Literary History of America (New York, 1901), p. 178.Google Scholar
20 Chapin, Clara C., “Bryant and Some of His Latin American Friends,” Bulletin of the Pan American Union (November, 1944), p. 610,Google Scholar and Peterson, op. cit., pp. 407–408.
21 For a fuller discussion of the motivations behind the first Hispanist movement in the United States, see Helman, E. F., “Early Interest in Spanish in New England (1815–1835),” Hispania, 29 (1946), 339–351 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and my “The Beginning of American His-panism, 1770–1830,” Hispania, XXXVII (1954), 482–489. See also Williams, Stanley T., The Spanish Background of American Literature (2 vols.; New Haven, 1955).Google Scholar
22 For a discussion of Spanish works then available in North American libraries, see Bernstein, Harry, “Las primeras relaciones intelectuales entre New England y el mundo hispánico,” Revista hispánica moderna, 5 (1929), 1–17.Google Scholar