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Gertrude of Wyoming has a few barriers to entry. The first is not Thomas Campbell's fault, as the title has been overtaken by history: the setting is not the current state* but the Wyoming Valley in eastern Pennsylvania, and anyone expecting a Western will be sorely disappointed. This is, instead, a sentimental romance wrapped around an incident in the American War of Independence, as told by a Scottish poet almost thirty years later.
So, expectations reset, one dives in to be confronted with a bucolic setting, complete with Pennsylvania suddenly acquiring a seashore (l.9) -- well, okay, Shakespeare did worse -- shepherds with timbrel (l.15) and flageolet (l.18) -- a frontier pastoral? hmm ... well maybe ... -- and a flamingo disporting on an Allegheny lake (l.20) -- what?!?
No. Just ... no.
In other words, the second barrier is Campbell's failure to adequately research his setting.** It also turns out to have major inaccuracies in his account of the Battle of Wyoming, but this is less evident to the general reader.
Props to the Brit making the Loyalists*** the villains, at least. And for excellently smooth versification in Spenserian stanzas. The narrative could use a little more connective tissue, though -- transitions between episodes are not always spackled over smoothly, leading to some confusion over the timeline. And the story itself a little less sentimentalism. Not one of the greatest narrative poems ever, but it deserves to be remembered for more than its influence on the form of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. And even so, I can't recommend it unless this sort of thing really is your thing.
* Named after the valley, apparently due to the poem's popularity.
** Later, the Pennsylvania mountains are covered with a magnolia forest.
*** ObLocalJargon: In the States, Americans who took the side of the home country during the war are generally called Tories or Loyalists, more or less interchangeably.
---L.
Subject quote from Gertrude of Wyoming, l.774-5.
So, expectations reset, one dives in to be confronted with a bucolic setting, complete with Pennsylvania suddenly acquiring a seashore (l.9) -- well, okay, Shakespeare did worse -- shepherds with timbrel (l.15) and flageolet (l.18) -- a frontier pastoral? hmm ... well maybe ... -- and a flamingo disporting on an Allegheny lake (l.20) -- what?!?
No. Just ... no.
In other words, the second barrier is Campbell's failure to adequately research his setting.** It also turns out to have major inaccuracies in his account of the Battle of Wyoming, but this is less evident to the general reader.
Props to the Brit making the Loyalists*** the villains, at least. And for excellently smooth versification in Spenserian stanzas. The narrative could use a little more connective tissue, though -- transitions between episodes are not always spackled over smoothly, leading to some confusion over the timeline. And the story itself a little less sentimentalism. Not one of the greatest narrative poems ever, but it deserves to be remembered for more than its influence on the form of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. And even so, I can't recommend it unless this sort of thing really is your thing.
* Named after the valley, apparently due to the poem's popularity.
** Later, the Pennsylvania mountains are covered with a magnolia forest.
*** ObLocalJargon: In the States, Americans who took the side of the home country during the war are generally called Tories or Loyalists, more or less interchangeably.
---L.
Subject quote from Gertrude of Wyoming, l.774-5.