Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Texas

In the Summer of 1854, Longfellow wrote in his diary: "I have at length hit upon a plan for a poem on the American Indians, which seems to me the right one and the only. It is to weave together their beautiful traditions as whole." What emerged the next year was "The Song of Hiawatha," a composite of legends, folklore, myth, and characters that presents, in short, lilting trochees (who can forget "By the shore of Gitche Gumme / By the shining Big-Sea-Water"?), the life-story of a real Indian, who provides the focus for the narrative thread of this epic drama of high adventure, tragedy, and conflict. The aim was not to tell a particular or specific story, but to unite the strands of various Indian legends, to present a sympathetic portrait of many Native American tribes, and especially to disclose their profound relationship with the natural world. This when both government policies and an expanding, land-hungry population were just initiating their inexorable campaign of displacement and annihilation. The poem received a decidedly mixed reception. Our own Boston Traveller revealed its biases: "We cannot help but express our regret that our own pet national poet should not have selected as a theme of his muse something better and higher than the silly legends of the savage aborigines." Despite this, the poem entered into our canon of great narratives, and was revived again in 1891 when Remington, surely the most renowned artist of the West, provided over 400 newly commissioned pen and ink drawings. This handsome, new, and freshly reset edition (the only unabridged version in print) presents the full text and includes the original Remington illustrations as well as a glossary of the Indian names and their meanings. Book jacket.

The Song of Hiawatha

710e8231-d813-4c05-b73d-1c28b1e96bff-1

Henry Longfellow

#paperback #Hiawatha #poem #Longfellow #NativeAmerican #Indian #Minnehaha #poetry #Ojibwe

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Maryland

Illustrated

The Song of Hiawatha is an 1855 epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that features Native American characters. The epic relates the adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha and the tragedy of his love for Minnehaha. Events in the story are set in the Pictured Rocks area on the south shore of Lake Superior. Longfellow's poem, though based on native oral traditions surrounding the figure of Manabozho, represents not a work of transmission but an original work of American Romantic literature.In his book on the development of the image of the Indian in American thought and literature, Pearce wrote about The Song of Hiawatha: "It was Longfellow who fully realized for mid-nineteenth century Americans the possibility of image of the noble savage. He had available to him not only poems on the Indian . . . but also the general feeling that the Indian belonged nowhere in American life but in dim prehistory. He saw how the mass of Indian legends which Schoolcraft was collecting depicted noble savages out of time, and offered, if treated right, a kind of primitive example of that very progress which had done them in. Thus in Hiawatha he was able, matching legend with a sentimental view of a past far enough away in time to be safe and near enough in space to be appealing, fully to image the Indian as noble savage. For by the time Longfellow wrote Hiawatha, the Indian as a direct opponent of civilization was dead, yet was still heavy on American consciences . . . . The tone of the legend and ballad... would color the noble savage so as to make him blend in with a dim and satisfying past about which readers could have dim and satisfying feelings."

America's most popular 19th century poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow devoted himself to providing his country with a national mythology, poetic tradition and epic forms. Known and loved by generations of schoolchidlren for its evocative storytelling, his 1855 classic is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

Category - Non Fiction / Poetry

Format - Hardcover

Condition - Excellent

Listed - A year ago

Views - 12

Wishes - 1

Ships From - Texas

Est. Publication Date - Nov 1982

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