The Poetry of Walt Whitman

ISBN-13: 9781403933164 / Angielski / Twarda / 2003 / 175 str.

Nick Selby; Nick Selby

Opis

This Readers' Guide assembles some of the most important critical writings about Walt Whitman in order to demonstrate how critical debate about him has reflected changing perceptions of America itself. Starting with early reviews, the guide moves through essays that elevate Whitman to America's spokesman, its 'good gray poet', and closes with essays that discuss Whitman in the light of postmodern, cultural materialist, and 'queer' reading practices. Nick Selby offers an overview of how the poet's critics have dealt with his work and its cultural legacy.

Spis treści

Introduction.- Early Reviews.- Whitman in the Early Twentieth Century.- Whitman and the 'American Renaissance'.- Whitman, Myth Criticism and the Growth of American Studies.- Whitman, Cultural Materialism and 'Reconstructive' Readings.- Ideology and Desire: Whitman and Sexuality.- Ideology and Deconstruction: Whitman and 'New Americanist' Critiques.- Bibliography.- Index.

O autorze

NICK SELBY is Lecturer in American Literature, and Associate Director of the Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies at the University of Glasgow.

Blurb

Nick Selby assembles some of the most important critical writings about Walt Whitman in order to demonstrate how critical debate about him has reflected changing perceptions of America itself. Beginning with essays by Emerson and Whitman, and reviews of the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855), this Readers' Guide discusses the literary expectations that Whitman transgressed, and continues by examining his gradual critical elevation into America's spokesman, its 'good gray poet', and his place in the growth of 'American Studies' in the 1940s and 1950s. In its final chapters the Guide explores postmodern, cultural materialist, and 'queer' readings of Whitman's poetry.