William Bartram Critical Essay | Critical Essay by N. Bryllion Fagin

Critical Essay by N. Bryllion Fagin

SOURCE: Fagin, N. Bryllion. “The Art of Bartram.” In William Bartram: Interpreter of the American Landscape, pp. 101-123. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1933.

In the following excerpt, Fagin provides an important reassessment of Bartram's Travels, noting unique stylistic techniques and describing underpinnings of his philosophy. Fagin also briefly notes the influences on Bartram as well as the effect he had on later writers.

Throughout this study Bartram's “style” has received incidental mention. This has been inevitable because of the amount of attention it has attracted from both literary and scientific commentators. English reviewers noted his “luxuriant and poetical” language; Carlyle enjoyed his “wondrous kind of floundering eloquence”; Zimmermann, in translating the Travels, corrected his “poetischen Floskeln”;¹ Squier insisted on retaining “the antiquated and somewhat quaint phraseology and style of the author”² of the “Observations”; Miss Dondore was impressed by his “luxuriant detail”;³ a modern American reviewer has been pleased...
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