Song of Hiawatha Analysis

Traditional European literature usually follows an iambic pattern, where you have two syllables with the emphasis falling on the first. For example, "I got the bus and rode to school." But for Hiaw...

At some level, Henry W. Longfellow probably knew he wasn't well qualified to talk about Native American legends. So he did a clever thing. He wrote an introduction to The Song of Hiawatha where he...

Longfellow decided to set The Song of Hiawatha in an area on the banks of Lake Superior, or what he thought the Native Americans of the area called "Gitche Gumee." Longfellow uses just about every...

In the "Form and Meter" section, you can find out about how Longfellow used a specific meter called "trochaic tetrameter" to write this poem. Longfellow chose this meter because he felt that it did...

On some level, Henry W. Longfellow knew that he was no expert when it came to the legends of Native American peoples. But the dude wanted to write a poem about these legends either way, so here's w...

When we say that you can know Longfellow by his zesty zeal, we mean that the guy wasn't afraid to be super-enthusiastic in his poetry. This form of open enthusiasm eventually died out as modernism...

Apart from some vocabulary, there's not a ton of stuff in The Song of Hiawatha that should trip you up, and that's one of the reasons it was so popular for so many years. Longfellow's poetry is eas...

It's true that there was once a Native American hero named Hiawatha. But the guy Longfellow was actually writing about in The Song of Hiawatha was another mythical dude named Nanabozho. Longfellow...

There's nothing even close to steam in this poem. Even when Hiawatha gets married to Laughing Water, all the poet wants to talk about is the food at their wedding feast.

George Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians (1.1)John Heckewelder, Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvan...