Fireside Poets

In American literary history, a number of New England poets of the 19th century are referred to as Fireside Poets or Household Poets ("chimney poets" or "household poets ") .

In general, the Fireside Poets are the poets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , William Cullen Bryant , John Greenleaf Whittier , James Russell Lowell and Oliver Wendell Holmes . What they have in common is that they wrote dignified, conventional poetry in line with Victorian tastes. Her poetry was exceptionally “socially acceptable” because it was easily accessible to a broad reading public and conveyed a politically and culturally pleasing, affirmative, sometimes sentimental worldview. It was particularly suitable for use in schools - to this day, many American school children have to learn Longfellows Paul Revere's Ride by heart. Against this background, the term Schoolroom Poets is also often used.

The Fireside Poets , especially Longfellow, were considered to be the culmination of American poetry well into the 20th century and were also very popular in Great Britain . In mostly elaborate editions, her works adorned the bookshelves of educated American middle-class families for a long time and were considered both the “epitome of new national literature” and the expression of a timeless, universal cultural ideal.

It was customary among contemporary recipients to have a family member recite the poems in the company of the family who had gathered in front of the fireplace. The term Fireside Poets can be traced back to this historical background. On the other hand, the term also emerged because the fireplace is a recurring motif in her poetry. It symbolizes a “rather comfortable flickering of the poetic imagination” as an expression of an atmosphere of meditative - contemplative reflection.

Ironically, Holmes himself introduced the term Boston Brahmins . In what was then Boston , the center of intellectual and cultural life in the New World , the group of Fireside Poets had advanced to become a leading class of writers who for a long time shaped the literary life of Boston and the nation as an authority like a caste of Brahmins or high priests .

In formal terms, the Fireside Poets' poetry was largely characterized by the adoption and adaptation of traditional European literary models or conventions, while in terms of content, attempts were made to incorporate typically American subjects and themes in order to give them a poetic generality. In dealing with the literary traditions of the Old World, the Fireside Poets turned out to be virtuoso cosmopolitans, but their aesthetic program also included simplicity and democratic proximity to the people.

Under the influence of European and not least German Romanticism , an American variety of romantic literature emerged in the works of the Fireside Poets . The emotional radicalism of the European models with their turn to subjectivity and pure imagination , however, was severely dampened by the prevailing Victorian preferences for morality and convention and sublimated into a form of elevated “salon romanticism”.

From the middle of the 19th century, however, a more radical literary-cultural as well as intellectual counter-movement emerged with the group of transcendentalists .

With the onset of modernity , a canon revision began after 1900 , which drew attention to artistic innovation and the potential for cultural subversion. In particular, as a result of the literary works of George Santayana and Van Wyck Brooks , the Fireside Poets were delegated to the second tier of American writers in favor of other authors of American Romanticism, in particular Walt Whitman , Herman Melville , Ralph Waldo Emerson , Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe .

literature

Marcus Münch: Building Faith on New-Found Shores. The Religious Dimension in the Poetry of the Fireside Poets . Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier 2016, ISBN 978-3-86821-642-4 .
Angela Sorby: Schoolroom Poets: Childhood, Performance, and the Place of American Poetry, 1865-1917 . University of New Hampshire Press, Durham NH 2005, ISBN 1584654570 .
Thomas Wortham: William Cullen Bryant and the Fireside Poets . In: Emory Elliott (Ed.): Columbia Literary History of the United States . Columbia University Press, New York 1988, ISBN 0231058128 , pp. 278-288.

Web links

American Academy of Poets, A Brief Guide to the Fireside Poets

Individual evidence

↑ Hubert Zapf : The literary establishment of the time: the Fireside Poets . In: Hubert Zapf (ed.): American literary history . JB Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-476-01203-4 , pp. 94–98, here p. 95. See also Study Guides: Fireside Poets . On: enotes.com. Accessed December 31, 2014.
↑ Cf. Hubert Zapf : The literary establishment of the time: the Fireside Poets . In: Hubert Zapf (ed.): American literary history . JB Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-476-01203-4 , pp. 94-98, here p. 95.

[1] Hubert Zapf : The literary establishment of the time: the Fireside Poets . In: Hubert Zapf (ed.): American literary history . JB Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-476-01203-4 , pp. 94–98, here p. 95. See also Study Guides: Fireside Poets . On: enotes.com. Accessed December 31, 2014.

[2] Cf. Hubert Zapf : The literary establishment of the time: the Fireside Poets . In: Hubert Zapf (ed.): American literary history . JB Metzler, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-476-01203-4 , pp. 94-98, here p. 95.