Philip Morin Freneau


Freneau, Philip Morin

 

Born Jan. 2, 1752, in New York City; died Dec. 19, 1832, in Middletown Point, N. J. American poet and publicist.

Freneau graduated from Princeton University. His first collection, Poems, was published in 1786. A veteran of the American Revolution (1775–83), Freneau expressed in this collection a growing disenchantment with the results of the revolution. A classicistic writer, he became the first American preromantic poet. His political lyric poems “The House of Night” (1779) and “The British Prison-Ship” (1781) marked the beginning of 19th-century American democratic poetry.

WORKS

The Poems, vols. 1–3. Princeton, N. J., 1902–07.
The Prose. New Brunswick, N. J., 1955.
In Russian translation:
“Sovet sochiniteliam.” In Estetika amerikanskogo romantizma. Moscow, 1977.

REFERENCES

Istoriia amerikanskoi literatury, vol. 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1947.
Nikoliukin, A. N. Amerikanskii romantizm i sovremennost’. Moscow, 1968.
Marsh, P. M. Philip Freneau, Poet and Journalist. Minneapolis, 1967.