The architects of the American literary canon have always struggled between aesthetics and the demands of historicity

The architects of the American literary canon have always struggled between aesthetics and the demands of historicity. The Hartford Wits are a sad example of how this tension has become lopsided in favor of aesthetic currency, practically erasing this important group from critical study. Although they seem obvious choices for American Literature classes or anthologies, as either early examples of satire, or simply as the literature of the Revolution, few teachers or editors follow a scrupulous model of literary progression. They usually skip directly from Jonathan Edwards’s sermons and Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography to the 19th century as if the years between were too full of debate and violence to produce literature other than the “creative nonfiction” of Thomas Jefferson.It is a further historical irony that the first movement to champion the idea of “American literature” itself, has been left out of the study of “American literature.” The first general collection of poetry attempted in the country, American Poems, Selected and Original, published in 1793 in Litchfield, Connecticut, was compiled by one of the “minor” Wits, Elihu Hubbard Smith. And of course this anthology is full of poems by his mentor Timothy Dwight, John Trumbull, Joel Barlow, David Humphreys, Lemuel Hopkins, Richard Alsop, and others. Trumbull’s M’Fingal was taught to school children for half a century, and remained the most popular long poem in the nation until Longfellow’s Hiawatha. In 1824 the nation’s second literary movement, New York’s Knickerbocker Group, gathered at a dinner to honor Trumbull. James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving raised their glasses to the 74-year-old veteran of American poetry, honoring his assured place in the canon.So, what happened? By the early 20th century we have Yale scholar Henry Beers writing about the Wits as a forgotten curiosity, finding these distant schoolmates only by reading an 1865 article by a dismissive Massachusetts partisan. And even the sympathetic Beers cannot help but use words like “unreadable,” “wooden,” and “epic pomp.” Obviously the Wits fell out of aesthetic favor, as all writers eventually do. Every generation remakes the canon in its own image, with all its preferences and prejudices, and anthologies and syllabi must always change with the times. But our choices should not come at the cost of historical inaccuracy. The question should be, not why don’t we like the poetry of the Wits today, but why did the people of that time appreciate it? How did it influence others? What were its successes and its failures? How does it shine a light on past and future literature?Before looking at ways to counteract this unfortunate development, it might be useful to look at the other factors that erased the Wits so completely from schools and books and national consciousness. Firstly, in the early years of the 19th century, the idea that the group was somehow too “aristocratic” became popular. This was intended as a slur, dreamed up by the more “egalitarian” Jeffersonians. With both pens and swords the Wits fervently took part in the American Revolution, and later in building the new Republic that sprang from it. This was hardly an aristocratic project by the standards of that time. Likewise, the political nature of some of the poetry itself is problematic – historical context becomes necessary. We see this most clearly with their collaborative effort, the Anarchiad: A Poem on the Restoration of Chaos and Substantial Night, in which they worry that the new national obsession with individual freedom will lead to a breakdown of society in which “every rogue shall literally do what is right in his own eyes.” In the 1780s, this Federalist plea for the adoption of the Constitution seemed like fighting for the soul of the new nation to them, but later generations, especially Jeffersonian democrats, did not see it that way. From the heights of proclaiming national revolution, the Wits had been drawn into mere party politics. Unfortunately, most literature based on politics remains of the moment rather than becoming immortal.Much of their work took the form of satire, which inevitably rusts with time, too. The portrayal of the British General Howe in M’Fingal may have brought chuckles from contemporaries, but means little to anyone but historians today. Furthermore, their non-satirical work sometimes championed the belief that the American Revolution would herald a golden age of humanity, an enthusiastic proclamation that is far too cloying for readers of more cynical times. “Long” poetry itself has lost its readership in the last century. This leads anthologists in particular to choose one of their contemporaries like Philip Freneau, whose poetry is usually shorter, though hardly better, than the Wits. Even something like Barlow’s “Hasty Pudding,” at three thousand words, was recently considered too long for four different anthologies of food poetry, where it should hold a place of honor.