Homer is both a shadowy figure and the generally acknowledged supreme genius of Western literature. No record of his life survives. Tradition places him some time in the 9th or 8th centuries BCE, and attributes to him Iliad, Odyssey, thirty-three Hymns, and a number of lesser works. William Cullen Bryant was an American poet, journalist, and editor of the New York Evening Post, called "the Founding Father of American poetry," and "the first American writer of verse to win international acclaim" for his Thanatopsis. He resides squarely within the Romantic poetic tradition, anticipating other American poets in this by over a decade. A fierce proponent of American literary nationalism, he earned the admiration of Edgar Allen Poe and served as literary mentor to Walt Whitman. Born in Puerto Rico, Ricardo Duchesne studied History at McGill University and later at Concordia University, under the supervision of George Rudé. In 1994 he received a doctorate in Social & Political Thought at York University. His Dissertation, "All Contraries Confounded: Historical Materialism and the Transition-to-Capitalism Debate", was awarded the "Doctoral Prize Award" for best dissertation of the year. In 1995, Duchesne was appointed assistant professor in the department of social science at the University of New Brunswick, where he remained until 2019.