A Historical Guide to Walt Whitman (Historical Guides to American Authors) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195120825 ISBN 13: 9780195120820

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2000

Synopsis

Few authors are so well suited to historical study as Whitman, who is widely considered America's greatest poet. This Guide combines contemporary cultural studies and historical scholarship to illuminate Whitman's diverse contexts. The essays explore dimensions of Whitman's dynamic relationship to working-class politics, race and slavery, sexual mores, the visual arts, and the idea of democracy. The poet who emerges from this volume is no "solitary singer," distanced from his culture, but what he himself called "the age transfigured," fully enmeshed in his times and addressing issues that are still vital today.

About this title

About the Author

David S. Reynolds is a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.  His other books include "Walt Whitman's America," "John Brown, Abolitionist," Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson," "Beneath the American Renaissance," and "Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America."  He is the winner of many prizes, including the Bancroft Prize, the Christian Gauss Award, the Ambassador Book Award, and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Review

"Carries Whitman discourse beyond the commonplace and into the extraordinary. A peculiar virtue of the Guide is that by focusing Whitman through a historical lens, we actually can view panoramically a number of significant contemporary issues such a race, gay ethos, class, and politics." -Catherine Kunce, Rocky Mountain Review

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0195120825
• ISBN 13: 9780195120820
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Reynolds David S.