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

Their poetry was also seen as “derivative” of the 18th century British writers like Alexander Pope by later American writers, who had developed their own styles separate from the endless couplets and witty rhymes so loved by the people of that time. It didn’t help that a decade later the British Romantics began their movement away from Pope’s established style. This led later scholars to be embarrassed that our own writers of that period had somehow not seen this literary revolution coming, even as they championed the revolution of arms and ideas. Perhaps the most persistent problem is the domination of modernist and post-modernist academics like me, brought up on free verse and Wallace Stevens complexity. I have to admit that most of the Wits’ poetry is simply not to my personal taste. But erasing their poetry and their story to satisfy my aesthetic preferences mocks both historical accuracy and a comprehensive understanding of American literature.The first solution might be to move the Wits from literature to history classes, because along with being writers they all played important roles in founding the Republic. Little anecdotes such as Humphreys presenting Cornwallis’s surrendered banner to the new United States Congress complement his elegy on the burning of Fairfield or his Address to the Armies or his poem on the “happiness” of America. Most of these men were writers and warriors, and all were dedicated to the idea of public service.Focusing on this intersection of the arts and public life is another approach to including the Wits. Timothy Dwight always said that he refused to live in a musty attic in order to become an author, and this was true of all of his generation. For better or worse, their allegiance was to life, to serving the community, and to their own worldly ambitions, rather than to the muse. This might provide a bracing antidote to the musty attic poets that dominate the canon, or it might lead us to the conclusion that their failure to dedicate themselves solely to art prevented them from achieving enduring admiration. But it is wonderful starting point for this conversation. A more practical way to connect the Wits to modern students is to focus on their college lives at Yale, as they squeezed into tiny dorm rooms in Connecticut Hall, drank hard cider, and experimented with vegetarianism. They joined secret literary societies where they traded banned books, and took part in protests against the administration that nearly led to the college’s dissolution. Trumbull’s poem the Progress of Dulness still makes students laugh, when taken in manageable bites. The adventures of students “Tom Brainless,” “Dick Hairbrain,” and “Harriet Simper” seem fairly universal, and most students or teachers today can relate to couplets such as this: