An ink-stained neoclassicist: Joel Barlow and the publication of poetry in the early Republic【翻译】

ABSTRACT
This study examines the literary career of the eighteenth-century American poet
Joel Barlow. Because Barlow, unlike his peers, came to fully embrace print-based
methods of authorship and advertising, between 1790-1810 he emerged as the most
widely read American poet. Employing a book studies methodology, this project focuses
on the publication details surrounding each of Barlow’s poems including: his
relationships with his publishers, the physical shape and appearance of his works, the cost
of those works, how those works were advertised, and the extent of their geographic
distribution. The arc of Barlow’s career was extraordinary. Barlow’s development, his
transformation from a standard eighteenth-century club poet who relied on manuscript
circulation and oral performance in the 1770s to an international man of letters and a
periodical fixture by 1800, highlights the possibilities and limitations of American
literary publishing during the early national period. Importantly, Barlow’s ability to
emphasize, rather than elide, his personal identity in the press, forces scholars to
reevaluate their notions of late eighteenth-century republican print culture.
Barlow’s career also impacts our reading of American literary history. In an age
of caution and deference in American poetry, Barlow was driven to maximize his
audience, publishing his poems across all price points and in every medium offered by
the time. Barlow’s efforts at self-promotion, coupled with his staunch republican politics,
allowed his poems to take on a life of their own in the era’s fiercely partisan press.
Thanks to his association with the transatlantic republican movement and radical
religious thinkers, this study suggests that poems such as the “Conspiracy of Kings,”
2
(1792) “The Hasty Pudding,” (1796) and the Columbiad (1807) enjoyed audiences as
large and as economically diverse as those of popular fiction. Even in an age marked by
the rise of the novel and the beginnings of romanticism, An Ink-Stained Neoclassicist
contends that Barlow’s proto-mass audience reveals the persistent popularity and cultural
importance of neoclassical verse in the intellectual life of many Americans at the turn of
the nineteenth century.

permission to reprint
portions of the article.
I would like to sincerely thank my advisor, Phillip Round, for his guidance
throughout the writing of this dissertation. For three years Professor Round never
hesitated to help, patiently reading through draft after draft. Professor Round consistently
pushed me to expand the dimensions of this project, saving it from antiquarian
obscurantism. The other members of my comprehensive exam and dissertation
committee, Matt Brown, Ed Folsom, and Laura Rigal, shaped my scholarly identity and
inspired me to investigate a little-traveled backwater of American literary history. I
would also like to thank Downing Thomas for his service as the outside member. The
opportunity to work with such an erudite group was the highlight of my time at the
University of Iowa. I am also extremely thankful for the support I received, throughout
my graduate study, from the Graduate College via the Presidential Fellowship.
Historical study has a profound way of making one realize they exist in merely
their own terribly brief subsection of time’s long continuum. During the course of my
research, I came to feel a deep kinship with the small group of scholars, living and dead,
who had investigated the same questions that interested me. I hope that this work serves
their efforts by building on what they found. For making my own scrap of history so
sweet, I dedicate this work, with love, to Mary.
v
ABSTRACT
This study examines the literary career of the eighteenth-century American poet
Joel Barlow. Because Barlow, unlike his peers, came to fully embrace print-based
methods of authorship and advertising, between 1790-1810 he emerged as the most
widely read American poet. Employing a book studies methodology, this project focuses
on the publication details surrounding each of Barlow’s poems including: his
relationships with his publishers, the physical shape and appearance of his works, the cost
of those works, how those works were advertised, and the extent of their geographic
distribution. The arc of Barlow’s career was extraordinary. Barlow’s development, his
transformation from a standard eighteenth-century club poet who relied on manuscript
circulation and oral performance in the 1770s to an international man of letters and a
periodical fixture by 1800, highlights the possibilities and limitations of American
literary publishing during the early national period. Importantly, Barlow’s ability to
emphasize, rather than elide, his personal identity in the press, forces scholars to
reevaluate their notions of late eighteenth-century republican print culture.
Barlow’s career also impacts our reading of American literary history. In an age
of caution and deference in American poetry, Barlow was driven to maximize his
audience, publishing his poems across all price points and in every medium offered by
the time. Barlow’s efforts at self-promotion, coupled with his staunch republican politics,
allowed his poems to take on a life of their own in the era’s fiercely partisan press.
Thanks to his association with the transatlantic republican movement and radical
religious thinkers, this study suggests that poems such as the “Conspiracy of Kings,”
vi
(1792) “The Hasty Pudding,” (1796) and the Columbiad (1807) enjoyed audiences as
large and as economically diverse as those of popular fiction. Even in an age marked by
the rise of the novel and the beginnings of romanticism, An Ink-Stained Neoclassicist
contends that Barlow’s proto-mass audience reveals the persistent popularity and cultural
importance of neoclassical verse in the intellectual life of many Americans at the turn of
the nineteenth century.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1
CHAPTER
I. BELATED PUBLICATIONS: THE ORAL AND MANUSCRIPT
FOUNDATIONS OF BARLOW’S CAREER...............................................27
II. THE MANY FACES OF EARLY NATIONAL AUTHORSHIP:
BARLOW’S TURN TO PRINT IN THE 1780S ...........................................66
III. FROM WIT TO REVOLUTIONARY: THE POET AS POLITICAL
AGENT.........................................................................................................114
IV. BARLOW’S BOOK-ARTS TRIUMPH: THE 1807 COLUMBIAD ..........164
V. DOWN FROM THE DAIS: THE FORGOTTEN COLUMBIAD AND
BARLOW’S POLITICIZED LITERARY FAME.......................................200
CONCLUSION: AN UNREPRESENTATIVE FIGURE ...............................................241
APPENDIX: GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION OF BARLOW’S POETRY ................251
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................254

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