Weltliteratur

As a young professor at Bowdoin College Longfellow was already gesturing toward the concept of comparative literature that he later espoused in his lectures at Harvard and, after his resignation, as the editor of such ventures as the multivolume anthology, Poems of Places (1876-1879). At Harvard, he taught Dante, Molière, and Goethe, a writer whose encyclopedic interests in world literature-he had in fact coined the very term ("Weltliteratur," in German)-resembled his own.


In this section

Photograph

Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow reading a book. Drawing, pencil on paper, December 1852.

HWL. Syllabus de la Grammaire Italienne (Boston: Gray et Bowen,1832). Photograph
       
Photograph

HWL. Saggi de' Novellieri italiani d'ogni secolo: tratti da' più celebri scrittori, con brevi notizie intorno alla vita di ciascheduno (Boston: Presso Gray e Bowen, 1832).

HWL. "Illustrations of Faust," lecture for a Harvard College course. Autograph manuscript, 1837. Photograph
       
Photograph

HWL. The Poets and Poetry of Europe.  Autograph manuscript, ca. 1845.

HWL. Kéramos (Cambridge: privately printed, 1877). Photograph
       
Photograph

HWL, ed. "Fujiyama, the Mountain" and "Niphon (Nippon) the Island," in Poems of Places, vol. 23:  Asia, III (Boston: Houghton, Osgood, and Co., 1878)

The Longfellow Jug. Josiah Wedgwood & Sons for Richard Briggs, 1880. Photograph
       
Photograph HWL's "Pour le Mérite" medal.    
       
     

Items Not Pictured In This Exhibit