The Great Romantic Poets
Walt Whitman (1819-92) a major US poet who wrote about individual freedom, equal rights and sexual love, as well as about his love for America. Though many readers thought his poems were immoral, he had a strong influence on later American poets, especially the beat generation. He used the new form of `free verse', in which lines do not rhyme. His best-known works are Leaves of Grass, Drum Taps (1865) and a collection of writings, Democratic Vistas (1871).
Place of birth - Long Island
The 2nd out of the 8 surviving children
Father - carpenter, mother - cared of the household
Of working class origin - it differed him from other poets, gave unique content with America
Public debates
1823 - resettled in Brooklyn
Whitman's eldest brother died of syphillus, another married a prostitute
George - civil veteran
Tried several professions
A journalist, American editor of newspaper
Founded “Weekly …”
House builder, a school teacher, printer
1856 - date of publication of ”Leaves from Grass”; there were 8 revisions in which he always added/eliminated sth (1860, 1867, 1871-2, 1876, 1881-2, 1891-2)
Tried (in each) to expand; writing progress
Model American poet
Always in movement; walking and watching
No title of the cover but portrait of Whitman; dressed in trousers, a shirt that was open on his chest Disrespectful look
The American poet
Reception of poems - enthusiastic
Form of free verse, sth enthusiastic, American ideology recognized as celebration of freedom
There's nothing like freedom , art demands discipline, some organization, comprehension of English versification, repetition, anaphoras, etc
His free verse was not new but based on …
Novelty about his “Leaves of Grass”
Whitman - someone very close to the people
Social phenomenon - pre-civil War America
The social reform defined movement
D. Reynolds Beneath the American Renaissance
Overriding anxiety about growing secularization
Weakening morality, Christianity
Pamphlets, leaflets aimed at moralizing people about the basic rules
Didactive - prove moral conditions by American nation (abolish slavery, criticizing, materialism and growing consumerising)
Social reformers - offered …living condition of people
Asylums, prison, education, abolition of capital punishment
(…)
… images of landscape; references to 4 main actors
British symbol of love
A grey bird of beautiful songs - stands for art/artist
Im Am no nightingales
Knowledge of death
Process of mourning - when he loves sb/sth we love we have to through trauma, effort of over…ing of aspect as attachement
Finding the replacement, the outside of yourself
“Mourning and Melancholia” - Sigmund Freud
Many stages
Reaction…
… performed a celebration)
Pindaric ode, ceremonious poem by or in the manner of Pindar, a Greek professional lyrist of the 5th century bc. Pindar employed the triadic structure attributed to Stesichorus (7th and 6th centuries bc), consisting of a strophe (two or more lines repeated as a unit) followed by a metrically harmonious antistrophe, concluding with a summary line (called an epode) in a different…
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