Chapter 7 - Asserting a National Voice

Summary

The noblest literary pedigree rested in poetry, and the eighteenth century, true to its penchant for taxonomic hierarchies, exalted the epic as its highest form. Only the emergence of an American epic would certify the poet's credibility as a literary power and, more important, fortify their sense of nationhood. Richard Henry Dana spent his adolescence warmed by the foment of the Monthly Anthology Club, a group of young Federalists in the Boston area eager to promote a nationalist literature within the bounds of taste and tradition as a bulwark against abuses by a democratic culture. A native of Cummington, Massachusetts, William Cullen Bryant won the esteem of the young literary establishment in his state, but his rise to national attention dates from his closing his law practice in the Berkshires to accept co-editorship of the newly launched New-York Review in 1825.