The Epic of Florida brings to light a neglected tradition of colonial poetry from the sixteenth century. Written in response to dramatic encounters on the peninsula—Ponce de León’s landfall in 1513, the founding of St. Augustine in 1565, and ongoing conflicts among European empires and Native peoples—these works capture how early modern writers transformed violent and uncertain events into epic verse.This classroom-ready volume presents three substantial poems: Juan de Cas...

The Epic of Florida brings to light a neglected tradition of colonial poetry from the sixteenth century. Written in response to dramatic encounters on the peninsula—Ponce de León’s landfall in 1513, the founding of St. Augustine in 1565, and ongoing conflicts among European empires and Native peoples—these works capture how early modern writers transformed violent and uncertain events into epic verse.This classroom-ready volume presents three substantial poems: Juan de Cas...

Essays that fuse literary scholarship and personal travelogue to explore American identityA Road Course in Early American Literature: Travel and Teaching from Atzlán to Amherst explores a two-part question: what does travel teach us about literature, and how can reading guide us to a deeper understanding of place and identity? Thomas Hallock charts a teacher’s journey to answering these questions, framing personal experiences around the continued ...

Anglo-American writers in the revolutionary era used pastoral images to place themselves as native to the continent, argues Thomas Hallock in From the Fallen Tree. Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, as territorial expansion got under way in earnest, and ending with the era of Indian dispossession, the author demonstrates how authors explored the idea of wilderness and political identities in fully populated frontiers.Hallock provides an alternative to the myth of a v...

An interdisciplinary reevaluation of William Bartram’s Travels, illuminating the natural, cultural, and intellectual landscapes of the eighteenth‑century Southeast through diverse scholarly lenses.William Bartram, author of Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulees, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws, was colonial America’s first n...

A selection of writings from naturalists John and William Bartram, who explored Florida in 1765In 1765 father and son naturalists John and William Bartram explored the St. Johns River Valley in Florida, a newly designated British territory and subtropical wonderland. They collected specimens and recorded extensive observations of the region’s plants, animals, geography, ecology, and Native cultures. The chronicle of their adventures provided the world with an inti...