Whitman possessed
Subtitle: poetry, sexuality, and popular authority
By: Mark Maslan.
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Baltimore
Language: eng
Number of pages: 221
Subjects: Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892 -- Political and social views; Homosexuality and literature -- United States -- History -- 19th century; Power (Social sciences) in literature; Homosexuality, Male, in literature; Possessiveness in literature; Masculinity in literature; Authority in literature; Gay men in literature; Self in literature; Sex in literature; Poetics
Description: "Whitman has long been more than a celebrated American author. He has become a kind of hero, whose poetry vindicates beliefs not only about poetry but also about sexuality and power. In Whitman Possessed: Poetry, Sexuality, and Popular Authority, Mark Maslan presents a challenging theory of Whitman's poetics of possession and his understandings of individual and national identity.

By reading his works in relation to nineteenth-century theories of sexual desire, poetic inspiration, and political representation, Maslan argues that the disintegration of individuality in Whitman's texts is meant not to undermine cultural hierarchies but to make poetic and political authority newly viable."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [173]-213) and index.
Table of contents: title: Sexual hygiene: the natural gates and alleys of the body; title: Ravishment and rapture; title: Masses and muses; title: Fictions of possession.