SOURCE: '"Thanatopsis' and the Development of American Literature," in William Cullen Bryant and His America, edited by Stanley Brodwin and Michael D'Innocenzo, AMS Press, 1983, pp. 133-46.

In the following essay, Rio-Jelliffe considers the traditional and innovative elements of "Thanatopsis, " examining its relationship to Bryant's own poetic theory and to the subsequent development of American literature.

On reading an anonymous poem brought by Willard Phillips, his co-editor with Edward Channing of the North American Review, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. is said to have exclaimed: "Ah! Phillips, you have been imposed upon; no one on this side of the Atlantic is capable of writing such verses." Dana's skeptical remark identifies in the unknown author, soon discovered as the young William Cullen Bryant, the presence of a new voice, the promise of a new direction in American letters. Other critics have since concurred with Dana's estimate. H.M. Jones takes...