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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... seems that he always found security in his relationship with his mother . Furthermore , upon careful examination Whitman's faith appears not so much an evasion of reality as a highly original and thoughtful synthesis of various ...
... seems simplistic to modern readers sensi- tive to the very real possibilities of large - scale ecological disaster and nuclear holocaust . The problem is not that Whitman believed in divine providence but that he expected future readers ...
... seems to have followed his self - advice rather success- fully . As Beaver has demonstrated in Walt Whitman - Poet of Science , Whitman's poetry does conform to the general principles and some of the particular discoveries of nineteenth ...
Contents
Reconsidering Whitmans Intention | 1 |
A New Religion | 12 |
Interpreting Historys Meaning | 27 |
Copyright | |
8 other sections not shown