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My name is Penny Jane Hallas
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and I'm a student in Fribourg
at the Collège Saint-Michel.
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My work is entitled
"When Verses Restore Virtues"
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and is divided into two parts.
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In the first part, I researched the ways
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in which dehumanization
manifested itself in poetry
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before and during the American Civil War.
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In the second part,
which is a creative part,
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I wrote my own poem on the topic
of dehumanization in a more personal way.
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To do the research part,
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I briefly familiarised myself with
the definition of dehumanization
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and its different occurrences
throughout the world.
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Then I researched the historical
context of antebellum America
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by referring myself to
the contents of the Constitution
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and the evolution
of the slave industry.
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The poems I thoroughly analyzed include
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"On Being Brought from Africa to America"
by Phillis Wheatley,
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"Bury Me in a Free Land"
by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper,
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"My Triumph Lasted Till the Drums"
by Emily Dickinson,
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and an untitled poem
by George Henry Bowker.
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I also drew on more Confederate poets such
as Henry Timrod and Abraham Joseph Ryan
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in order to encapsulate
the wide spread of Civil War poetry
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and the deferring opinions at the time.
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In some ways, Civil War poetry
perpetuated the mobilization of opinion
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that created a deep fundamental divide
within a nation, and, at the same time,
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writers and poets became more aware of
the impact that their writings could have.
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The Civil War allowed America
to renew its literary identity
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that had up until then been
very strongly dependent on England.
