Bostonian Poetry Before Longfellow: Adventures in Literary Archaeology

In this program, two Boston College English professors will discuss American poetry published in Boston during the Revolutionary and Early National periods. Christy Pottroff will construct a rich contextual analysis of several artifacts that appear in surviving records related to Phillis Wheatley Peters and her husband John Peters, and consider what a nose ring, eight old coats, four silver spoons, and a neighborhood park in Boston can teach us about their lives. Paul Lewis will discuss forgotten works he and Boston College English majors recovered when they read through the 4,500 poems included in the fifty-nine magazines published in Boston between 1789 and 1820. Taken together, their work is replete with moments of discovery that have brought literary history and specific poems to life.
Paul Lewis is a professor emeritus at Boston College, past president of the Poe Studies Association, the curator of exhibitions on literary Boston, and the neologist who coined the word “Frankenfood.” The author of books and articles on humor, American literature, gothic fiction, and literary Boston, Lewis edited The Citizen Poets of Boston: A Collection of Forgotten Poems, 1789-1820, for the University Press of New England. He is now writing a book on the first responses to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven."
Christy L. Pottroff is an assistant professor in the Boston College English Department where she teaches classes in early and nineteenth-century American literature. Her book-in-progress, Postal Hackers, tells the stories of the nineteenth-century misfits who hacked the U.S. postal system by using mail tools and protocols in extraordinary ways.
*Please note that due to technical issues, the beginning of the event was not recorded. The recording starts approximately one minute into Pottroff's lecture.