The strange sad war revolving
Subtitle: Walt Whitman, Reconstruction, and the emergence of Black citizenship, 1865-1876
By: Luke Mancuso.
Series: Studies in English and American literature, linguistics, and culture; Studies in English and American literature, linguistics, and culture (Unnumbered)
Publisher: Camden House
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Columbia, SC, USA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 152
Subjects: Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892 -- Political and social views.; Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892.; Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 19th century.; African Americans -- History -- 1863-1877.; Citizenship -- United States -- History -- 19th century.; War poetry, American -- History and criticism.; African Americans in literature.; Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877); United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Literature and the war.
Description: Walt Whitman's prolific Reconstruction project has remained the most uncultivated decade in Whitman studies for over a century. This first book-length analysis points the way for a needed recovery of Whitman's 1865-1876 publications by considering them in the context of the legislative discourse on black emancipation and its stormy aftermath.

While Whitman's Union ideology is virtually uncontested, the perceived absence of attention to race relations in his postwar texts has recently become a source of curiosity and a target of criticism. By yoking together literary and legislative discourses, this book provides a rhetorical pathway for the recovery of the emancipatory significance of Whitman's works of the Reconstruction decade.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [140]-148) and index.