Philip Freneau - Legacy

Legacy

The non-political works of Freneau are a combination of neoclassicism and romanticism. His poem "The House of Night" makes its mark as one of the first romantic poems written and published in America. The gothic elements and dark imagery are later seen in poetry by Edgar Allan Poe, who is well known for his gothic works of literature. Freneau's nature poem, "The Wild Honey Suckle" (1786), is considered an early seed to the later Transcendentalist movement taken up by William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. Romantic primitivism is also anticipated by his poems "The Indian Burying Ground," and "Noble Savage."

Although he is not as well known as Ralph Waldo Emerson or James Fenimore Cooper, Freneau introduced many of the themes and images in his literature that later authors are famous for.

The Matawan Post Office on Main Street has a sculpture on the wall of Freneau. It features him with black slaves as he was an abolitionist later in life. It was created in 1939 by Armin Scheler, under a New Deal commission from the Treasury Department.

There is a Freneau fire company on Main Street/Route 79. Until a name change in mid 2000's, there was a restaurant called the Poet's Inn, where Freneau was supposed to have had many a rum.