Land and Sea: The Lyric Poetry of Philip Freneau by Richard C. Vitzthum (review)

84ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW Richard C. Vitzthum. Land and Sea: The Lyric Poetry of Philip Freneau. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978. 197 p. $12.50. Richard C. Vitzthum's assessment of Philip Freneau as lyric poet rather than "Poet of the American Revolution" is a welcome addition to early American studies. It raises some new questions (some unanswered) regarding Freneau's abilities as a poet and develops in some detail Freneau 's changing personal philosophy in his work. Vitzthum focuses on the poems written between 1780 and 1790, poems that exhibit Freneau's concern with what Vitzthum calls the "female land-male sea polarity." Vitzthum writes that "the sea always connoted to Freneau the destructive, chaotic, inhuman aspects of nature manifested most tellingly to human beings in the fact of physical death" while he "always associated land with the benevolent, harmonious, passive aspects of nature, seeing its fecundity as the antithesis of ocean destructiveness and its gentleness as characteristically female." Vitzthum uses this polarity to reveal the development of Freneau's philosophy from that reflecting a "fancy-oriented eighteenth-century romanticism" before 1 780 to a "rationalistic stoicism" in the poems after 1780. Vitzthum even suggests that this change in personal philosophy was responsible for Freneau's revisions of earlier poems reflecting philosophies which he no longer held into works that coincided with his current beliefs. In short, Freneau's revisions (Vitzthum cites "The Farmer's Winter Evening," later retitled "The Citizen's Resolve," as one example) represent his ability to respond to the changing times and shape his poetry according to the needs of his age and his own artistic temperment. Instead of embracing either an optimistic or a pessimistic pose in his later work, Freneau embraces a rational, deistic view of the world. His portrait of nature turns more rational and his verse becomes more didactic. As such, Vitzthum's study reveals a fascinating glimpse into the workings of an early American poet and provides readers with a reassessment of Freneau's talents and an appreciation of his achievement. JEFFREY B. WALKER, Oklahoma State University Philip Ward, ed. The Oxford Companion to Spanish Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. 629 p. $27.50. Hispanists will view this publication with both considerable delight and some reservations. On the one hand, itjoins a long line ofdistinguished "Oxford companions. . ." and it is the last major (at long last) Western European literature to be represented; that it is one of Oxford's fifth centennial titles is a bonus pleasure. Like all of the companions, it is handsomely turned out and prepared with impeccable scholarly criteria. Ward, who is a professional Iibrarian with an avocation for Hispanic studies (he has published both criticism and translations) has done a credible job ...