But, perhaps, there is no more famous a myth-maker as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who turned Paul Revere into a national hero in the days leading to the Civil War. Despite what his poem claimed, Paul Revere did not wait on the banks of Charlestown to see the signal from the Old North Church ("one if by land, two if by sea"); he actually helped set them up as a back-up signal, in case he didn't reach his destination. He did not row himself to the opposite shore, but was rowed over by friends. He did not go to "every Middlesex village and farm," but only a select few. His main goal was to reach the Hancock-Clarke House in Lexington, just off the battle green.
Perhaps most importantly, Paul Revere did not ride alone. He was one of several riders that day, including William Dawes and Samuel Prescott. Longfellow was aware of all the available data on the historic ride and purposely chose to ignore it to create a composite character that would inspire his generation.
This is perhaps of no great importance, but, generally speaking, fact is better in history than fiction.
Longfellow left just enough wiggle room to suggest that, for the sake of a poem, perhaps fiction can be useful in history.
The second sentence in the second paragraph is missing a crucial "not."
ReplyDeleteThank goodness people read this blog enough to notice my typos and word mistakes. Three were caught on this one! :)
ReplyDeleteReally enjoying the blog! I realize this is a little off the Longfellow thread, but I've been re-reading Irving's Washington, and wanted to respond, since you mentioned it. While his biographical modifications and reliance on the anecdotal, etc., have been extensively noted by scholars, this from the introduction of the Twayne Edition: "Although more than one recent biographer has disparaged Irving's labors...most biographers from...Lossing in 1870 to...Flexner ('65-'73) have found Irving a useful authority....Quoting materials not easily available (and often lost), offering judgments based on many years of study, Irving's biography remains useful to professional historians....Irving's work was, of course, eventually superseded, but not until the twentieth century. The first full length biography of unquestionably higher reliability was published by Nathaniel Wright Stevenson and Waldo Hilary Dunn in 1940."
ReplyDeleteThat's a great point! And sometimes the liberties taken with history are more important anyway, as they shed some light on the author and his/her contemporary period and the way that history was viewed at the time. Irving definitely took his book seriously, even if many of his sources were anecdotal, and I, for one, respect that. Thanks for the comment!
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