Minor Prophecy: Walt Whitman's New American ReligionMany of Walt Whitman's earliest readers hailed him as a religious prophet. For them, Leaves of Grass was more than literary art; it was sacred scripture. Recent scholarship has, however, dismissed those early enthusiasts as naive, if not crazy. David Kuebrich's new study of Whitman corrects that academic oversight by giving the early Whitmanites their due as the critics who most clearly perceived the nature and purpose of the poet's labors—to begin a new religion. Kuebrich's thorough, intelligent study, based squarely on textual evidence, offers a revisionist interpretation of America's great poet, returning religious vision and spirituality to the center of Whitman studies. |
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... conceive of himself as a religious prophet . It is true that during these later decades Whitman's poetry becomes less ... conceived religious purpose upon the earlier poetry . In sum , there is a good deal more unity both in the Leaves ...
... conceived of perfect freedom as the fulfillment of human nature . Only the ideal religious personalities of the future would be perfectly free ; these women and men would live in obedience to the spiritual laws of their nature and thus ...
... conceive of his preference for male friendships as natural in a society that imposed crip- pling role expectations upon ... conceived of comrade- ship as essential to the soul's full development . All of these factors enabled him to ...
Contents
Reconsidering Whitmans Intention | 1 |
A New Religion | 12 |
Interpreting Historys Meaning | 27 |
Copyright | |
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