William Cullen Bryant

His form and style draw on that of the British Romantic poets, for example, in his:

• celebration of the common

• emphasis on feeling and sentiment

• use of local landscape to consider broader human problems in a moral context

We should view this work in its historical and cultural context:

• see "Who Reads an American Book?: Calls for a National Literature" section

• see paintings from the Hudson River school -- esp. Thomas Cole's "Kindred Spirits"

"Like Cole, Bryant used nature to allegorize moral ideas about the human condition."

"Nature is important here because it presents the unspoiled and panoramic landscapes that are the essence of America."

"Considering the ways that nineteenth-century newspapers brought together high and low culture for a general audience, the accessibility of Bryant's language, and his appeal to readers' sense of nationalism may illuminate . . . why Bryant was America's most beloved poet at the time."

"Bryant's poetry in some ways anticipates Emerson and Thoreau in its argument that nature is a metaphor for divine truths . . . [but we] should be careful not to oversimplify this comparison."

Discussion Questions:

1.) Bryant's poetry was influence by the paintings of Thomas Cole, which often depicted the sublimity and power of nature. Examine one of Cole's paintings and then choose one of Bryant's poems to explore and discuss Cole's influence on Bryant's use of nature in his poetry.

2.) Choose one of the essays in "Who Reads an American Book?: Calls for a National Literature" and discuss the ways that one of Bryant's poems responds to the essayist's description of a uniquely American literature.

3.) How is the poet's view of nature in "To a Waterfowl" and "The Yellow Violet" similar to or different from that depicted in "The Prairies"?

4.) Compare the view of nature or death in "Thanatopsis" to Freneau's in "The Indian Burying Ground" (p. 502).