Longfellow's Imaginative Engagement

The Works of His Late Career

Jeffrey Hotz

• Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781683936848
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Literature

Longfellow's Imaginative Engagement is a first-of-its-kind study of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's late-career poems and biography from 1861 until 1882, covering the poet's posthumous publications and the handling of his literary estate. Using never-before-discussed archival materials from Harvard's Houghton Library and the Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site, including unpublished poems and poem fragments, this literary biography presents Longfellow's vibrant and complex final two decades. After the tragic death of his beloved second wife, Frances (Fanny) Elizabeth Appleton, Longfellow reinvented himself as a creative artist, transforming his loss and the nation's suffering in the Civil War and postwar period into compelling art. In this book, Jeffrey Hotz interprets the distinct phases of Longfellow's late career, exploring his narrative poetry, translations, personal lyrics, religious poetry, aesthetic verse, and end-of-life vision of mortality as a journey. He considers Longfellow's friendships and family life, publication strategies and literary reputation, and the recurrent theme of longing for an ideal female figure in his poems and private life. Interweaving unpublished poems and poem fragments with interpretations of published collections, Longfellow's Imaginative Engagement examines the poet's complex voice, which captured the public's imagination, making him America's most famous poet in the nineteenth century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• A Note on Quotations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The Beginning of the Late Career, 1861-1863
• Pursuing Successful Publication Because of Personal and National Tragedy
• Narratives of Recuperation and Loss in Tales of a Wayside Inn
• Commitments Through the End of the 1860s
• The Divine Comedy Translation
• Ideals of Completion and Unity
• The New England Tragedies and the Restless Yearning for Feminist Ideals
• Grand Projects of the Early 1870s
• Anxiety about Personal Faith in Public Art
• Christianity as an Incomplete Project
• Continuities and Collisions of Faith
• Solace and Aesthetics in the Mid-1870s
• New Directions
• Aftermath and the Arts of Personal Disclosure and Desire
• The Imperatives of Love and the Beautiful in The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems
• Looking Inward and Outward: The Final Years, 1875-1882
• Preparing for Charted and Uncharted Journeys
• The Aesthetic World and the Inner Self
• Ultima Thule as the Final Spiritual and Artistic Journey
• The Posthumous Collections
• After March 24, 1882
• Visions of the Multiverse
• Epilogue
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• General Index
• Published Poem Index
• Unpublished Poem and Poem Fragment Index
• Short Translated Poem Index
• About the Author