Title: Whitman possessed : poetry, sexuality, and popular authority /
Authors: Maslan, Mark.
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press,
Year: 2001
Subjects: Whitman, Walt, Views on sex.; Whitman, Walt, Political and social views.; Whitman, Walt, Criticism and interpretation.; Homosexuality and literature United States History; Power (Social sciences) in literature.; Male homosexuality in literature.; Possessiveness in literature.; Masculinity in literature.; Authority in literature.; Gay men in literature; Self in literature.; Sex in literature; Poetics.
Abstract: This is a challenging theory of Whitman's poetics of possession and his understandings of individual and national identity. The author reads his works in relation to 19th-century theories of sexual desire, poetic inspiration and political representation.
Contents: Sexual hygiene: the natural gates and alleys of the body -- Ravishment and rapture -- Masses and muses -- Fictions of possession.