Armin Paul Frank and Christel-Maria Maas: Transnational Longfellow: A Project of American National Poetry (Interamericana, 5).

• Christoph Irmscher

For several years now, a veritable Longfellow Renaissance has been underway in the United States. Transnational Longfellow seeks to contribute to that trend, although some of the major figures that have helped shape it (Eric Haralson, Mary Louise Kete, Virginia Jackson, Charles Calhoun and J. D. McClatchy) are absent from the bibliography. But, then, as Maas and Frank would argue, Longfellow’s unique role as a cultural mediator wasn’t learned in the United States anyway but in Europe – more precisely, in Germany, where Longfellow spent time in 1829 and then again in 1835/1836 and 1842 and where he “surely” (p. 24) became aware of the ideas of the Schlegel brothers and the future blending of “national characters” they advocated and celebrated.

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