To fight aloud is very brave: American Poetry and the Civil War

FAIN: FT-54636-06

Faith Barrett
Lawrence University of Wisconsin (Appleton, WI 54911-5798)

My project examines the stances of the address to the nation in American Civil War poetry. As the first book-length study of this material, it considers the work of canonical male writers, unpublished soldier-poets, and women and African American poets who have often been overlooked. During the war years, Americans believed that poetry had a vital role to play in defining national identity. My project considers how poets created for themselves a platform from which they could address the nations of the Confederacy, the Union, and the United States. Ultimately I suggest that the war changed the way American poets addressed their audiences and that Civil War poetry changed the way Americans understood the construct of the nation.

Associated Products

To Fight Aloud is Very Brave (American Poetry and the Civil War) (Book)
Title: To Fight Aloud is Very Brave (American Poetry and the Civil War)
Author: Faith Barrett
Abstract: Focusing on literary and popular poets, as well as work by women, African Americans, and soldiers, this book considers how writers used poetry to articulate their relationships to family, community, and nation during the Civil War. Faith Barrett suggests that the nationalist “we” and the personal “I” are not opposed in this era; rather they are related positions on a continuous spectrum of potential stances. For example, while Julia Ward Howe became famous for her “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” in an earlier poem titled “The Lyric I” she struggles to negotiate her relationship to domestic, aesthetic, and political stances. Barrett makes the case that Americans on both sides of the struggle believed that poetry had an important role to play in defining national identity. She considers how poets created a platform from which they could speak both to their own families and local communities and to the nations of the Confederacy, the Union, and the United States. She argues that the Civil War changed the way American poets addressed their audiences and that Civil War poetry changed the way Americans understood their relationship to the nation.
Year: 2012
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 0781558499638
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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