Longfellow Redux [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

~ (Author) "On August 22, 1879, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was standing at the front door of Craigie House, his residence on Brattle Street in Cambridge, enjoying the..." (more)
Key Phrases: dun voyageur, literary originality, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Peter Piper (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A friendly and readable scholarly book about Longfellow, which seeks to introduce a cosmopolitan and democratically multicultural Longfellow for our time." Times Literary Supplement "One of the most important books on Longfellow ever written. With impeccable scholarship, Christoph Irmscher brings us along on a captivating journey across the broad range of Longfellow's truly complex body of work... Irmscher does what many readers in and out of academia might have thought improbable: he makes Longfellow exciting." Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club and editor of Dante's Inferno: The Longfellow Translation "Irmscher's enthusiasm for his subject is infectious... Readers are likely to be both charmed and edified. As this book makes clear, Longfellow has much to teach us about how poetry can matter to people outside the academy." New England Quarterly "Succeeds splendidly in giving us appreciatory access to Longfellow's clear and coherent understanding of himself as a poet, and provides illuminating readings of numerous poems... Irmscher's highly readable, richly detailed, masterly restoration of Longfellow is more than welcome." Partial Answers

Product Description

The time has come to take another look at Longfellow, America's most popular poet. Christoph Irmscher overturns the modern prejudice against Longfellow as the mere purveyor of literary comfort food. Examining his unpublished papers alongside letters written by his fans at home and abroad, Irmscher offers a fresh view of the poet's connection with his audience. Irmscher demonstrates that Longfellow saw literature as a transnational conversation breaking down social and linguistic barriers. For Longfellow, the poet was less Emerson's "liberating god" than a distributor of cultural goods democratically shared by authors and readers alike. Longfellow Redux is the first book-length study of Longfellow's poetry since 1966 and contains numerous illustrations, including previously unpublished pencil sketches by Longfellow himself.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press; Reprint edition (June 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252075862
• ISBN-13: 978-0252075865
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #516,062 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)