31 Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
Shelli Homer
Introduction
Hailed as the “poet of the American Revolution,” positioned as the “father of American Poetry,“ and, finally, decried as “that rascal Freneau” by George Washington, Philip Freneau fell into relative obscurity during the later part of his lifetime and his work remains underappreciated and understudied as an early piece of the American literature canon. Those who knew him and those who later studied his life maintain Freneau possessed a purely idealistic view of freedom and Democracy for America. His role as the poet of the American Revolution is largely what has solidified Freneau’s place in American literature.
The oldest of five children, Philip Morin Freneau was born on January 2, 1752 in New York to Pierre Fresneau (Philip dropped the “s” from his surname) and Agnes Watson. The Fresneaus emigrated from Oléron, France and were prosperous merchants who imported wine and other commodities from Europe. The Watsons were successful farmers from Scotland with considerable landholdings in New Jersey. Freneau did not work as a merchant during his lifetime and failed in his attempt at farming later in life. His family had prepared him, instead, for intellectual and artistic pursuits. His father prided himself on his large book collection and made sure his children became avid readers. At 10 years old, Freneau’s family left New York for the family’s 1000 acre New Jersey plantation, leaving him in New York with tutors to receive a proper education. His father’s focus on education led Freneau begin Princeton in 1768 with a sophomore standing. Upon his graduation, Freneau dabbled in a few different activities, such as teaching, but was drawn to the sea. He traveled and spent time in the, then, West Indies on numerous occasions, and he served as a captain with his brother’s shipping company out of South Carolina — both up and down the east coast and to the West Indies. Much like Richard Henry Dana, Freneau’s experiences at sea proved advantageous to his life as a writer. His writing continued to develop and would be the focus of the majority of his life when he committed to the publishing industry after leaving the sea.
Freneau’s writing is often discussed as three main periods: his early works played with a variety of poetic forms and were largely composed during his time at Princeton; the high point of his career was during the American Revolution, where his poems championed the cause as he honed his craft; and his later works were, as critics argue, stifled by American seriousness.
Freneau began his studies at Princeton along with James Madison, Hugh Brackenridge, and William Bradford. These four friends formed a literary club called the American Whig Society. This sparked the previously defunct Well Meaning Society to resurface and rename themselves the Cliosophic Society, thus formally reigniting the Princeton literary wars between the Whigs and Tories. While Freneau experimented with prose, going