Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Whitman, Slavery, and the Emergence of Leaves of Grass

Whitman, Slavery, and the Emergence of Leaves of Grass

Klammer, Martin

Paperback

Literary CriticismPoetry CriticismGeneral Racism & Ethnic Studies

ISBN10: 0271024992
ISBN13: 9780271024998
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Published: Apr 15 1997
Pages: 192
Weight: 0.64
Height: 0.44 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Although the significance of Walt Whitman's thinking about African Americans and slavery to his poetry has been largely ignored by Whitman scholars, Martin Klammer argues that Leaves of Grass is a major text dealing with race relations in the mid-nineteenth century. Through a close historical analysis, Klammer reveals how the evolution of Whitman's attitudes--from pro-slavery to Free Soilism to a deep sympathy for slaves--parallels and inspires his emergence as a poet from the beginning of his career through the 1855 edition. The issue of slavery continually influenced Whitman's work, culminating in 1854 when public reaction to two national developments on the slavery question--the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the case of the fugitive slave Anthony Burns--suddenly created an audience more receptive to Whitman's views and compelled him to revise and publish the poems known as Leaves of Grass. At the heart of these poems is a radically new and sympathetic view of African Americans and of their significance to Whitman's vision of a multiracial, egalitarian society. While previous critics have described Whitman's puzzling, seemingly contradictory views on slavery, no other study has so thoroughly investigated Whitman and the question of slavery, nor understood the importance of slavery to Whitman's development as a poet.

Also in

Poetry Criticism

View All