Short biography of philip freneau poems list

Well versed in the classics in Monmouth County under the tutelage of William Tennent, Philip entered Princeton as a sophomore in , but the joy of the occasion was marred by his father's financial losses and death the year before. In spite of financial hardships, Philip's Scottish mother believed that her oldest of five children would graduate and join the clergy.

Though he was a serious student of theology and a stern moralist all his life, Freneau found his true calling in literature. As his roommate and close friend James Madison recognized early, Freneau's wit and verbal skills would make him a powerful wielder of the pen and a formidable adversary on the battlefields of print. Freneau soon became the unrivaled "poet of the Revolution" and is still widely regarded as the "Father of American Literature".

Although Freneau had produced several accomplished private poems before college, it was the intense experience of pre-Revolutionary-War Princeton that turned the poet's interest to public writing. Their verbal skirmishes with the conservative Cliosophic Society provided ample opportunities for sharpening Freneau's skills in prose and poetic satire.

Charged with literary and political enthusiasm, Freneau and Brackenridge collaborated on a rollicking, picaresque narrative, Father Bombo's Pilgrimage to Mecca in Arabia, which presents comic glimpses of life in eighteenth-century America. This piece, recently acquired by Princeton and published by the University Library , may well be the first work of prose fiction written in America.

During their senior year Freneau and Brackenridge labored long on another joint project to which Freneau contributed the greater share. Their composition was a patriotic poem of epic design, The Rising Glory of America, a prophecy of a time when a united nation should rule the vast continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. At the commencement exercises of September , Brackenridge read this poem to a "vast concourse of the politest company," gathered at Nassau Hall.

The poem articulated the vision and fervor of a young revolutionary generation.

Philip Freneau Poems ; 1. The

After he graduated from Princeton in , he was author, editor, government official, trader, and farmer. He tried teaching and soon found that he hated it. As regards the genesis of his poems, two facts in his life are especially important.