The Anarchiad

The Anarchiad (1786–87) is an American mock-epic poem that reflected Federalist concerns during the formation of the United States. The Anarchiad, or American Antiquities: A Poem on the Restoration of Chaos and Substantial Night was penned by four members of the Hartford Wits: David Humphreys, John Trumbull, Joel Barlow, and Lemuel Hopkins. It was serialized in 12 parts in The New Haven Gazette and Connecticut Magazine between October 26, 1786 and September 13, 1787.

The Anarchiad
by David Humphreys, John Trumbull, Joel Barlow, Lemuel Hopkins
Cover of 1861 reprint
First published in	New Haven Gazette and Connecticut Magazine
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject(s)	Politics
Genre(s)	Mock-epic
Publication date	1786–87

The Anarchiad drew inspiration from Alexander Pope's satiric epics like The Dunciad and James MacPherson's forged Ossian cycle of epic poems, which inspired the pseudo-classical setting as a vehicle for satire. The poem purported to be fragments of an ancient heroic poem unearthed in ruined fortifications to the west. As a literary counterpart to The Federalist Papers, the poem criticized the dysfunctional Articles of Confederation, demanded a stronger central government, and rebuked the Anti-Federalists for permitting "Anarch" (Chaos) to reign over the fledgling republic. Connecticut's Anti-Federalists came in for particular opprobrium. The authors repeatedly nodded to Shays' Rebellion as a harbinger of the Republic's dissolution.

Sources

Books

• Bergland, Renée L. (2000). The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects. University Press of New England. ISBN 978-0874519440.
• Cleves, Rachel Hope (2009). The Reign of Terror in America: Visions of Violence from Anti-Jacobinism to Antislavery. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1107403987.
• Engell, James (2007). "Satiric Spirits of the Later Eighteenth Century: Johnson to Crabbe". A Companion to Satire. Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture. Blackwell Publishing. pp. 233–256. doi:10.1002/9780470996959.ch14. ISBN 978-1-4051-1955-9.
• Engell, James (2010). The Committed Word: Literature and Public Values. Penn State Press. ISBN 978-0-271-03891-9.
• Gardner, Jared (2000). Master Plots: Race and the Founding of an American Literature, 1787–1845. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-6538-7.
• Giles, Paul (2001). Transatlantic Insurrections: British Culture and the Formation of American Literature, 1730–1860. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-3603-3.
• Goldwyn, Adam J. (2021). "A New England Underworld: The Necropolitics and Necropoetics of Katabasis in the Anarchiad (1786–87) and Mock Epics of the Early U. S. Republic". In Tomes, Maya Feile; Goldwyn, Adam J.; Duquès, Matthew (eds.). Brill's Companion to Classics in the Early Americas. Brill. pp. 271–294. doi:10.1163/9789004468658_011. ISBN 978-90-04-46857-3.
• Hart, James D.; Leininger, Phillip W. (1995). The Oxford Companion to American Literature (6th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-506548-0.
• Lohman, Laura (2020). Hail Columbia! American Music and Politics in the Early Nation. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-093061-5.
• McWilliams, John (1989). The American Epic: Transforming a Genre, 1770–1860. Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture. Vol. 36. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521107020.
• Nelson, Dana D. "'The Free Action of the Collective Power of Individuals': Vernacular Democracy and the Sovereign People". In Pollmann, Judith; te Velde, Henk (eds.). Civic Continuities in an Age of Revolutionary Change, c. 1750–1850: Europe and the Americas. Palgrave Studies in Political History. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 249–270. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-09504-7_11.
• Wells, Colin (2008). "Revolutionary Verse". In Hayes, Kevin J. (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Early American Literature. Oxford University Press. pp. 505–526. ISBN 978-0-19-518727-4.
• Wells, Colin (2002). The Devil and Doctor Dwight: Satire and Theology in the Early American Republic. Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-5383-6.
• White, Ed (2014). "The Shays Rebellion in Literary History". In Lawson, Andrew (ed.). Class and the Making of American Literature: Created Unequal. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-82206-0.

Periodicals

• Bloomfield, Max (Winter 1988). "Constitutional Values and the Literature of the Early Republic". Journal of American Culture. 11 (4): 53–58. doi:10.1111/j.1542-734X.1988.1104_53.x.
• Dowling, William C. (1990). "Joel Barlow and The Anarchiad". Early American Literature. 25 (1): 18–33. JSTOR 25056793.
• Engels, Jeremy (Fall 2006). "Disciplining Jefferson: The Man within the Breast and the Rhetorical Norms of Producing Order". Rhetoric & Public Affairs. 9 (3): 411–435. doi:10.1353/rap.2006.0069.
• Goodheart, Lawrence B.; Hinks, Peter P. (2013). "'See the Jails Open and the Thieves Arise': Joseph Mountain's Revolutionary Atlantic and Consolidating Early National Connecticut". Atlantic Studies: Global Currents. 10 (4): 497–527. doi:10.1080/14788810.2013.832013.
• Goodin, Brett (January 2021). "Two Barbary Captives: Allegiance Through Self-Interest and International Networks, 1785–1796". Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 145 (1): 1–32. doi:10.1353/pmh.2021.0000.
• Grasso, Christopher (1995). "Print, Poetry, and Politics: John Trumbull and the Transformation of Public Discourse in Revolutionary America". Early American Literature. 30 (1): 5–31. JSTOR 25056998.
• Lee, Judith Yaross (1988). "Republican Rhymes: Constitutional Controversy and the Democratization of the Verse Satire, 1786–1799". Studies in American Humor. New Series 2. 6: 30–39. ISSN 0095-280X. JSTOR 42573682.
• Lee, Judith Yaross (2020). "American Humor and Matters of Empire: A Proposal and Invitation". Studies in American Humor. 6 (1): 8–43. doi:10.5325/studamerhumor.6.1.0008. JSTOR 10.5325/studamerhumor.6.1.0008.
• Martinko, Whitney A. "'So Majestic a Monument of Antiquity': Landscape, Knowledge, and Authority in the Early National West". Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum. 16 (1): 29–61. doi:10.1353/bdl.0.0017.
• McDonald, Will (Spring 2009). "Still Personal: Joel Barlow and the Publication of Poetry in the 1780s". Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association. 42 (1): 89–104. ISSN 0742-5562. JSTOR 25674358.
• Osborne, Jeff (Fall–Winter 2008). "Constituting American Masculinity". American Studies. 39 (3–4): 111–132. JSTOR 40930399.
• Post, Constance J. (1988). "Revolutionary Dialogics in American Mock-Epic Poetry: Double-Voicing in M'Fingal, The Anarchiad, and The Hasty-Pudding". Studies in American Humor. New Series 2. 6. ISSN 0095-280X. JSTOR 42573683.
• Sayre, Gordon M. (1998). "The Mound Builders and the Imagination of American Antiquity in Jefferson, Bartram, and Chateaubriand". Early American Literature. 33 (3): 225–249. JSTOR 25057127.
• Van Dover, J. K. (1989). "The Design of Anarchy: "The Anarchiad", 1786-1787". Early American Literature. 24 (3): 237–247. ISSN 0012-8163. JSTOR 25056781.

Others

• Cutterham, Tom (July 24, 2017). "Anarchy and the American Revolution". Age of Revolutions.

External links

• Full text of poem