Containing Multitudes - Schmidgall

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This study explores Walt Whitman's contradictory response to and embrace of several great prior British poets: Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Blake, and Wordsworth (with shorter essays on Scott, Carlyle, Tennyson, Wilde, and Swinburne).

Résumé :
This study explores Walt Whitman's contradictory response to and embrace of several great prior British poets: Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Blake, and Wordsworth (with shorter essays on Scott, Carlyle, Tennyson, Wilde, and Swinburne). Through reference to his entire oeuvre, his published literary criticism, and his private conversations, letters and manuscripts, it seeks to understand the extent to which Whitman experienced the anxiety of influence as he sought to establish himself as America's poet-prophet or bard (and the extent to which he sought to conceal such influence). An attempt is also made to lay out the often profound aesthetic, cultural, political, and philosophical affinities Whitman shared with these predecessors. It also focuses on all of Whitman's extant comments on these iconic authors. Because Whitman was a deeply autobiographical writer, attention is also paid to how his comments on other poets reflect on his image of himself and on the ways he shaped his public image. Attention is also given to how Whitman's attitudes to his British fore-runners changed over the nearly fifty years of his active career....

Biographie:

• Note on Notes and Citation


• Preface


• 1. An Introduction: Leaves and the Retrospective Lands


• Terrible Query: An American Literature?


• That Wonderful Little Island: British Literature in Leaves of Grass


• Prospective: Lacks and Wants Yet


• 2. Shakespeare and Whitman


• Whitman and the Bacon Debate


• Walt vs. The Bard


• Mellifluous and Honey-tongued Poets


• Whitman and the Romantics' Shakespeare: Victor Hugo


• Parallel Lives?


• 3. Milton and Whitman


• Debutant Poets: 1645, 1855


• Whitman and America Read Milton


• Camerados Close


• Satan and Walt


• Answerable Styles


• Strange Bedfellows After All?


• Awakeners


• 4. Burns and Whitman


• Camerado Bards


• Walt Reads Rob


• Self-esteem


• Mystic Tie of Brotherhood


• The Self-satisfied Preachers


• Outr? Beings


• Conscious Painful Being


• Old Acquaintance


• Of Tombs: A Coda


• 5. Blake and Whitman


• Making the Connection


• Two Mystics Together Clinging


• Other, Stronger Lessons


• Poets of Contrariety and Rebellion


• Iconoclasts: Poetry Unfettered


• Poets of Sexual Delight


• Announcing Adhesiveness


• Death's Door: A Coda


• 6. Wordsworth and Whitman


• Walt on Wordsworth


• The 'Prelude' to Whitman


• Prospectus: Knowing the World


• Self-empowerment


• 'Green' Poets: Nature and Democracy


• 'Mighty Scheme of Truth': Prophets of a New Religion


• 'Great Social Principle of Life': Comradery


• At War with General Tendency


• Separate Persons


• 7. Whitman and Some Other 'Big Fellows'


• Walter Scott


• Thomas Carlyle


• Alfred Tennyson


• Oscar Wilde


• Algernon Swinburne


• Notes


• Foreword


• Introduction


• Shakespeare


• Milton


• Burns


• Blake


• Wordsworth


• Some Other 'Big Fellows'