43 pages • 1 hour read
John Greenleaf WhittierSnow-Bound: A Winter Idyl
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1865A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
"The Song of Hiawatha" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1855)
Like Snow-Bound, Longfellow draws on materials of American cultural history to produce an ambitious elegiac look at the Native culture that once flourished around the Great Lakes. As with Whittier, Longfellow infuses the story with the melancholy feeling of lost greatness. In relating the entirely fictional tragedy of a star-crossed love between a warrior of one nation and a woman from another, Longfellow elevated American subject matter using the tight formal structures of British epic poetry.
"Evangeline" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1847)
In drawing on the real-time historic event of the expulsion in the 1750s by the British of settlers in Acadia, modern-day Nova Scotia and Maine, Longfellow creates the heartbreaking story of two lovers separated by the diaspora and desperate to find each other across decades. The poem, epic in scope and moral in intent, was an expression of the Fireside Poets’s determination to earn the respect of the European literary establishment by elevating American subjects to highly serious poetic treatment.
"Thanatopsis" by William Cullen Bryant (1817)
Less a narrative and more a meditation, “Thanatopsis” embodies the moral intent and broad philosophical interests of the Fireside Poets. Written in the earliest days of American republic, when Bryant himself was still in college, the poem uses the poet’s meandering walk in the Massachusetts woods to expound on the implications of time, the powerful spiritual presence of nature, and the inevitability of death. That tone, at once serene and melancholic, is echoed in Whittier’s own look back on a time he sees now as lost. Available:
Further Literary Resources
"The Supernaturalism of Snow-Bound" by Lewis Miller Jr (1980)
The reading, still regarded as indispensable, explores how the poem mingles elements of historical record and personal memories with Whittier’s sense of the spiritual power of nature. The reading provides a careful section-by-section analysis of Whittier’s use of the folklore device of ghosts and the nostalgic melancholic tone of memory to suggest how the poet, now an adult and moving toward his own mortality, draws on that supernatural power to console him.
Schoolroom Poets: Childhood, Performance, and the Place of American Poetry by Angela Sorby (2005)
This landmark contemporary critical analysis of Whittier’s generation of poets examines in detail the defining works of the Fireside Poets, including Whittier, as the first bold expression of American literature. The study focuses particularly on the poets’ dramatic use of the figure of the child as a vehicle for instruction, and how, despite the homey and often inviting themes and tones, the poetry introduced a hard-edged philosophy of stoicism and moral diligence.
The Poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier: A Reader’s Guide by William Joliffe (2000)
This volume, which is part anthology and part critical analysis, addresses the most salient point in Whittier studies: how difficult his structured poetry can seem to a contemporary reader. Jolliffe explores elements of Whittier’s poetic craft and inventories the poet’s major themes. In addition, the study provides helpful annotations for Whittier’s poetry and all of its learned allusions, including an entire chapter on Snow-Bound.
Listen to Poem
Part of the LibriVox series of Great Audio Books series and available on YouTube, veteran reader Paul Henry Tremblay recites the entire poem with great emphasis and dramatic effect that illuminates the sonic achievement of Whittier’s tightly metered lines.
