Walt Whitman (1819-1892) will at once attract and puzzle audiences, making listeners ask themselves questions about what he is saying and what they are thinking. They will appreciate his ability to see the "journey work of the stars" in a blade of grass. They will be puzzled though by his loafing, and even more than puzzled by his open, public talk about sex. They will enjoy his optimism and his celebration of America. They will on the whole enjoy his poetry and his personality. As Joel Meyerson has written, he is ". . . the all-embracing poet who is able to be embraced by all." His frankness will stand out as he talks about man's place in the world.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) will be known to the audience as someone they read in high school and college. Now, they will see the special role he played in the American Renaissance. They will hear his dissent from Thoreau's romantic idea of nature. They will come to value his idea of "darkness" as they see it in context with Transcendentalism's avoidance of evil. In Hawthorne's divergence and in his keen ability to think in images, audiences will find a lot of material for comparison and contrast within the movement. They will also find in him an author whose life and whose dark past played an important part in the stories he told. Hawthorne will be a new friend for those who meet him at Chautauqua as he was for Melville who met him for the first time on a picnic to Monument Mountain when the topic of discussion was American literature. He will talk literature and philosophy with Melville.

Herman Melville (1819-1891) gives this program a philosophical voice, but not with Emerson's sort of abstractions. He balances his meditations on metaphysics with daily affairs on board sailing vessels and events of high adventure. He thinks in images and narratives. He can be even darker than Hawthorne and deeply melancholic. Yet his stories will provoke the kinds of questions that draw people less into despair than into meditation-the sort of meditation Melville always associated with the sea. This Chautauqua will be one of the celebrations held around the country on the 150^th anniversary of the publication of Moby-Dick, the classic he wrote and rewrote while developing his friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne. He will talk about Moby-Dick with Hawthorne.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1864) will be the principal voice of American Transcendentalism in this Chautauqua. He is a better choice than Ralph Waldo Emerson for the task of representing that philosophy at Chautauqua because he will give it his own prickly embodiment. He will draw more questions from the audience than Emerson ever would, simply because his radicalness is more apparent. He will be asked why he lived alone in the woods; why he spent the night in jail rather than pay his taxes; why he defended John Brown; why he quit the church; why he called for civil disobedience. He will bother more people than Emerson would. He will also sound like a modern environmentalist and many in the audience will recall reading him while camping out in nature.

Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) was the most popular author of the time. She was, in fact, the only financially successful writer of this bunch. Her stories may not be "great literature," but they are good literature and very much worth studying as a significant feature of the popular culture of the time and of American history ever since. Besides, more people will come to the Chautauqua tent having read her books than will be the case of any other American Renaissance author. Alcott will also surprise audiences with the complexity of her personality when she steps out from behind her Little Women persona. She matches Margaret Fuller's feminist concerns. Like Fuller she had a "Puritan toughness" that Thoreau admired. Men in her audience will find her conversation with Thoreau well worth their while. Women in the audience will remember from girlhood days the ideas the men are discovering as they listen to her.

Frederick Douglass' (1817-1894) voice in this program will allow the reform theme of the American Renaissance to be represented strongly and will keep literature from being looked at as a matter of form and style only. He will help audiences see the moral enthusiasm of the other figures as well as his own. As the foremost African American leader of the 19^th century, Douglass will show audiences what a powerful voice the slaves and freedmen had in America at the time. Especially as he speaks out for the rights of women was well as for African Americans he will illustrate how much the American Renaissance is a 'literature for democracy." Douglass, of course, was as much an orator as a writer and Chautauqua will be an ideal setting to showcase this important part of Douglass' art. As audiences look back 150 years ago this year to the publication of Moby-Dick, they will look back with Frederick Douglass to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law that same year.

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