Whitman the political poet
By: Betsy Erkkila.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1989
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 360
Subjects: Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892 -- Political and social views; Political poetry, American -- History and criticism; Poets, American -- 19th century -- Biography; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century
Description: Recent critical studies have emphasized the formal, mystical, and psychological dimensions of Walt Whitman's art, dwelling mainly upon his Emersonian and Transcendental sources. This study is the first book to undertake a detailed analysis of Whitman's entire work in relation to the political struggles of the 19th century. Erkkila repairs the split between the private and the public, the personal and the political, the poet and history, that has in the past defined the analysis and evaluation of Whitman's work. Her approach combines close reading and historicist analysis, examining his poems as both products and agents of the political culture of his time. Among the topics explored are the ways in which the politics of race, class, gender, capital, technology, western expansion, and war enter into the poetic design of "Leaves of Grass"; the relation between Whitman's (homo)sexual body and the body politic of his poems; and the ways in which the Civil War and its aftermath affected Whitman's artistic ordering and reordering of his work.
Notes: Bibliography: p. 324-347.
Includes index.