ABSTRACT
Brackenridge achieved a reputation as a rough fellow but was well educated and devoted to cultural pursuits, an embodiment of the revolutionary, democratic mythology of self-advancement. Brackenridge taught school and read divinity, took a master's degree from the College of New Jersey in 1774, and wrote patriotic dramas. Brackenridge served one term in the state assembly, from 1786 to 1788, but provoked voters, opposing land ownership bills and approving the federal constitution. Brackenridge's output was immense and varied: verse drama, hudibrastics, dialect poetry; political essays in newspapers, pamphlets, and handbills; serialized fiction; sermons; and law commentary. The homely Father Bombo's Pilgrimage, written when Brackenridge and Freneau were composing a blank verse epic to forecast a glorious cultural awakening in America, exposed man everywhere as a gullible buffoon. Brackenridge displays classical allusions and acknowledges his debts to writers like Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding and Miguel de Cervantes.
