The panel reads two poems from Longfellow’s Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863): ‘Torquemada’ and ‘The Birds of Killingworth’, examining the role of zeal, dogma, and radical conduct in the poems, and what it may suggest about the war between the states.
Tag: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
CR Episode 148: Longfellow and the Civil War, Part I
In the first of a two-part reading of selections from Longfellow’s Tales of a Wayside Inn, the panel reads the beginning of the Prelude and then examines “Paul Revere’s Ride” in detail, with attention to the structure of the text and its formal aspects.
CR Episode 27: Longfellow’s Excelsior
The panel reads and surveys three poems by Longfellow: ‘The Cross of Snow’, ‘The Day Is Done’, and ‘Excelsior’, and makes a case for Longfellow’s narrative and emotive expression, in contrast to modern critical demands for abstraction and complexity.