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"Nothing Done!”: The Poet In Early Nineteenth-Century American Culture, Jill Anderson

Jill E. Anderson

In this dissertation, I argue that early nineteenth-century American poets’ and readers’ interpretations of Romanticism shaped their understanding of the role poetry and its producers could play in a developing national culture. By examining the public careers and private sentiments of four male poets — William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, and Jones Very — I analyze how each reconciled poetic vocation with the moral and economic obligations associated with the attainment of manhood. I locate these poets and their critics within specific historical discourses of aesthetic reception and production, focusing on the tensions and overlaps between …