American Literature / Unit 6 AML 0520 short lesson, about 20 seconds
*Evangeline*, *Hiawatha*, and the National Myth
Captions available
The idea
Longfellow wrote three long narrative poems putting native and colonial legends into European meters: "Evangeline" in eighteen forty-seven, "The Song of Hiawatha" in eighteen fifty-five, and "The Courtship of Miles Standish" in eighteen fifty-eight. They gave the country a legendary past in verse people could recite.
In practice
Three legends, in borrowed meters.
Where people slip
The witness calls the sense of the past ahistorical.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
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