Walt Whitman S Language Experiment

Author : James Perrin Warren
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 1990-09-24
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780271073040

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Walt Whitman's Language Experiment by James Perrin Warren Pdf

Combining intellectual history with literary analysis, this study of Whitman's language experiment from 1855 to 1892 offers a refreshing new look at his theory of language especially the English language in America—as an expression of a "national spirit" and relates that theory to the language and style of Whitman's major poems and essays. Whitman viewed American English as the most expressive, poetic language that ever existed, and he used his studies of historical linguistics to corroborate that view. Part 1 explicates the theory of language that Whitman developed in his linguistic notebooks, unpublished manuscripts, fugitive essays, and two chapters of the popular book Rambles Among Words. The diction and syntax of the 1855–1856 editions of Leaves of Grass are analyzed to show how Whitman's overwhelming interest in language theories resulted in the "language experiment" of the poems. Part 2 examines the ways in which Whitman's view of language as an expression of the constantly evolving spirit of America subtly shifted to a more cumulative, backward-looking vision of linguistic and spiritual change. Analysis of the diction, syntax, and organization of the last four editions of Leaves of Grass reveals how this shift in vision affected the style of Whitman's poetry and prose from 1860 to 1892. Whitman's groundbreaking poetic style, the author concludes, was a direct consequence of his view of language and the human spirit as dynamic, progressivist, and actively changing within a temporal world. Conversely, Whitman's experiments in both prose and poetry helped confirm his view of linguistic and spiritual evolution.

Author : Andrew Lawson
Publisher : University of Iowa Press
Page : 187 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2009-11
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781587296703

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Walt Whitman and the Class Struggle by Andrew Lawson Pdf

By reconsidering Whitman not as the proletarian voice of American diversity but as a historically specific poet with roots in the antebellum lower middle class, Andrew Lawson in Walt Whitman and the Class Struggle defines the tensions and ambiguities about culture, class, and politics that underlie his poetry.Drawing on a wealth of primary sources from across the range of antebellum print culture, Lawson uses close readings of Leaves of Grass to reveal Whitman as an artisan and an autodidact ambivalently balanced between his sense of the injustice of class privilege and his desire for distinction. Consciously drawing upon the languages of both the elite culture above him and the vernacular culture below him, Whitman constructed a kind of middle linguistic register that attempted to filter these conflicting strata and defuse their tensions: “You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, / You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.” By exploring Whitman's internal struggle with the contradictions and tensions of his class identity, Lawson locates the source of his poetic innovation. By revealing a class-conscious and conflicted Whitman, he realigns our understanding of the poet's political identity and distinctive use of language and thus valuably alters our perspective on his poetry.

Author : Frank D. Casale,Harold Bloom
Publisher : Infobase Publishing
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781438127682

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Bloom's How to Write about Walt Whitman by Frank D. Casale,Harold Bloom Pdf

Offers advice on writing essays about the poetry of Walt Whitman and lists sample topics.

Author : David S. Reynolds
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2000-01-13
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0199728089

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A Historical Guide to Walt Whitman by David S. Reynolds Pdf

Few authors are so well suited to historical study as Whitman, who is widely considered America's greatest poet. This Guide combines contemporary cultural studies and historical scholarship to illuminate Whitman's diverse contexts. The essays explore dimensions of Whitman's dynamic relationship to working-class politics, race and slavery, sexual mores, the visual arts, and the idea of democracy. The poet who emerges from this volume is no "solitary singer," distanced from his culture, but what he himself called "the age transfigured," fully enmeshed in his times and addressing issues that are still vital today.

Author : Christine Smedley
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 618 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Abjection in literature
ISBN : UCR:31210015198508

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Dirty Language by Christine Smedley Pdf

Author : Susan Belasco,Ed Folsom,Kenneth M. Price
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 503 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2007-01-01
Category : Poetry
ISBN : 9780803260009

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Leaves of Grass by Susan Belasco,Ed Folsom,Kenneth M. Price Pdf

This comprehensive volume celebrates the 150th anniversary of the 1855 edition of Walt Whitman?s Leaves of Grass with twenty essays by preeminent scholars representing a variety of critical perspectives that focus exclusively on the original edition. Once regarded as primarily a collector?s item, this edition is now viewed as the poet?s most bold and compelling articulation of the possibilities of American democracy. ø The essays weave a rich tapestry of the most current, innovative criticism on this foundational book of American poetry. The contributors treat Whitman?s poetry, his biography, his politics, his reception in the United States and abroad, race and ethnic issues, nineteenth-century America, and even the complex typographical history of the first edition of Leaves of Grass. The volume also includes a tribute from the renowned poet Galway Kinnell.

Author : Robert Lawson-Peebles
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2014-07-17
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781317870388

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American Literature Before 1880 by Robert Lawson-Peebles Pdf

American Literature Before 1880 attempts to place its subject in the broadest possible international perspective. It begins with Homer looking westward, and ends with Henry James crossing the Atlantic eastwards. In between, the book examines the projection of images of the East onto an as-yet unrecognised West; the cultural consequences of Viking, Colombian, and then English migration to America; the growth and independence of the British American colonies; the key writers of the new Republic; and the development of the culture of the United States before and after the Civil War. It is intended both as an introduction for undergraduates to the richness and variety of American Literature, and as a contribution to the debate about its distinctive nature. The book therefore begins with a lengthy survey of earlier histories of American Literature.

Author : M. Jimmie Killingsworth
Publisher : University of Iowa Press
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2009-11
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781587295164

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Walt Whitman and the Earth by M. Jimmie Killingsworth Pdf

Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas’d corpses, It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last. —Walt Whitman, from “This Compost” How did Whitman use language to figure out his relationship to the earth, and how can we interpret his language to reconstruct the interplay between the poet and his sociopolitical and environmental world? In this first book-length study of Whitman’s poetry from an ecocritical perspective, Jimmie Killingsworth takes ecocriticism one step further into ecopoetics to reconsider both Whitman’s language in light of an ecological understanding of the world and the world through a close study of Whitman’s language. Killingsworth contends that Whitman’s poetry embodies the kinds of conflicted experience and language that continually crop up in the discourse of political ecology and that an ecopoetic perspective can explicate Whitman’s feelings about his aging body, his war-torn nation, and the increasing stress on the American environment both inside and outside the urban world. He begins with a close reading of “This Compost”—Whitman’s greatest contribution to the literature of ecology,” from the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass. He then explores personification and nature as object, as resource, and as spirit and examines manifest destiny and the globalizing impulse behind Leaves of Grass, then moves the other way, toward Whitman’s regional, even local appeal—demonstrating that he remained an island poet even as he became America’s first urban poet. After considering Whitman as an urbanizing poet, he shows how, in his final writings, Whitman tried to renew his earlier connection to nature. Walt Whitman and the Earth reveals Whitman as a powerfully creative experimental poet and a representative figure in American culture whose struggles and impulses previewed our lives today.

Author : Klaus Benesch
Publisher : Univ of Massachusetts Press
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : History
ISBN : 1558497463

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Romantic Cyborgs by Klaus Benesch Pdf

Explores the relationship between authorship and technology in nineteenth-century America.

Author : Donald D. Kummings
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 628 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2009-10-19
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781405195515

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A Companion to Walt Whitman by Donald D. Kummings Pdf

Comprising more than 30 substantial essays written by leading scholars, this companion constitutes an exceptionally broad-ranging and in-depth guide to one of America’s greatest poets. Makes the best and most up-to-date thinking on Whitman available to students Designed to make readers more aware of the social and cultural contexts of Whitman’s work, and of the experimental nature of his writing Includes contributions devoted to specific poetry and prose works, a compact biography of the poet, and a bibliography

Author : S. Manning
Publisher : Springer
Page : 348 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2001-12-17
Category : History
ISBN : 9780230511835

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Fragments of Union by S. Manning Pdf

Fragments of Union , a new approach to comparative literary studies, is about forms of connections: between nations, literatures, individuals, words. It asks how, and why, connections get severed, and about the nature of the pieces that remain. Interdisciplinary readings of writings by Scots and Americans re-draw the literary map of both countries during the Enlightenment and Romantic periods. Political, philosophical, cultural and grammatical dimensions give its analysis sharp relevance to the new conditions presented by devolved government in Britain.

Author : Melody Graulich,Nicolas S. Witschi
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 415 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2020-02-17
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781496210487

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Dirty Words in Deadwood by Melody Graulich,Nicolas S. Witschi Pdf

Dirty Words in "Deadwood" showcases literary analyses of the Deadwood television series by leading western American literary critics. Whereas previous reaction to the series has largely addressed the question of historical accuracy rather than intertextuality or literary complexity, Melody Graulich and Nicolas S. Witschi's edited volume brings a much-needed perspective to Deadwood's representation of the frontier West. As Graulich observes in her introduction: "With its emotional coherence, compelling characterizations, compressed structural brilliance, moral ambiguity, language experiments, interpretation of the past, relevance to the present, and engagement with its literary forebears, Deadwood is an aesthetic triumph as historical fiction and, like much great literature, makes a case for the humanistic value of storytelling." From previously unpublished interviews with series creator David Milch to explorations of sexuality, disability, cinematic technique, and western narrative, this collection focuses on Deadwood as a series ultimately about the imagination, as a verbal and visual construct, and as a literary masterpiece that richly rewards close analysis and interpretation.

Author : Matthew Ward Miller
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2010-12-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780803225343

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Collage of Myself by Matthew Ward Miller Pdf

Collage of Myself presents a groundbreaking account of the creative story behind America?s most celebrated collection of poems. In the first book-length study of Walt Whitman?s journals and manuscripts, Matt Miller demonstrates that until approximately 1854 (only a single year before the first publication of Leaves of Grass), Whitman?who once speculated that Leaves would be a novel or a play?was unaware that his ambitions would assume the form of poetry at all. ø Collage of Myself details Whitman?s discovery of a remarkable new creative process that allowed him to transform a diverse array of texts into poems such as ?Song of Myself? and ?The Sleepers.? Whitman embraced an art of fragments that encouraged him to ?cut and paste? his lines into ever-evolving forms based on what he called ?spinal ideas.? This approach to language, Miller argues, represents the first major use in the Western arts of the technique later known as collage, an observation with significant ramifications for our reception of subsequent artists and writers. Long before the modernists, Whitman integrated found text and ready-made language into a revolutionary formulation of artistic production that anticipates much of what is exciting about modern and postmodern art. ø Using the Walt Whitman Archive?s collection of digital images to study what were previously scattered and inaccessible manuscript pages, Miller provides a breakthrough in our understanding of this great American literary icon.

Author : Julian Levinson
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2008-07-02
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780253000286

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Exiles on Main Street by Julian Levinson Pdf

How have Jews reshaped their identities as Jews in the face of the radical newness called America? Julian Levinson explores the ways in which exposure to American literary culture -- in particular the visionary tradition identified with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman -- led American Jewish writers to a new understanding of themselves as Jews. Discussing the lives and work of writers such as Emma Lazarus, Mary Antin, Ludwig Lewisohn, Waldo Frank, Anzia Yezierska, I. J. Schwartz, Alfred Kazin, and Irving Howe, Levinson concludes that their interaction with American culture led them to improvise new and meaningful ways of being Jewish. In contrast to the often expressed view that the diaspora experience leads to assimilation, Exiles on Main Street traces an arc of return to Jewish identification and describes a vital and creative Jewish American literary culture.

Author : Roland Greene,Stephen Cushman
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 454 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2016-07-26
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780691170435

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The Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms by Roland Greene,Stephen Cushman Pdf

An essential handbook for literary studies The Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms—drawn from the latest edition of the acclaimed Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics—provides an authoritative guide to the most important terms in the study of poetry and literature. Featuring 226 fully revised and updated entries, including 100 that are new to this edition, the book offers clear and insightful definitions and discussions of critical concepts, genres, forms, movements, and poetic elements, followed by invaluable, up-to-date bibliographies that guide users to further reading and research. Because the entries are carefully selected and adapted from the Princeton Encyclopedia, the Handbook has unrivalled breadth and depth for a book of its kind, in a convenient, portable size. Fully indexed for the first time and complete with an introduction by the editors, this is an essential volume for all literature students, teachers, and researchers, as well as other readers and writers. Drawn from the latest edition of the acclaimed Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics Provides 226 fully updated and authoritative entries, including 100 new to this edition, written by an international team of leading scholars Features entries on critical concepts (canon, mimesis, prosody, syntax); genres, forms, and movements (ballad, blank verse, confessional poetry, ode); and terms (apostrophe, hypotaxis and parataxis, meter, tone) Includes an introduction, bibliographies, cross-references, and a full index