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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... symbols . This approach also ignores the referential aspects of the poet's sym- bols and instead views them as symptoms of unconscious conflicts.13 Neither of these theories elucidate either Whitman's own understanding of symbolism or ...
... symbols . Rather , consciously risking obscurity , he only brings the reader into the " at- mosphere of the theme or thought , " that is , he leads the reader to a natural fact and then uses his poetry to help create a delicate ...
... symbols from history , the Leaves draws its symbols mainly - although by no means exclusively - from the realm of nature ; and when it does employ historical symbols , it takes them from Ameri- can history . Feeling that his readers ...
Contents
Reconsidering Whitmans Intention | 1 |
A New Religion | 12 |
Interpreting Historys Meaning | 27 |
Copyright | |
8 other sections not shown