Walt Whitman in Context

"Walt Whitman is a poet of contexts. His poetic practice was one of observing, absorbing, and then reflecting the world around him. Walt Whitman in Context provides brief, provocative explorations of thirty-eight different contexts - geographic, literary, cultural, and political - through which to engage Whitman's life and work. Written by distinguished scholars of Whitman and nineteenth-century American literature and culture, this collection synthesizes scholarly and historical sources and brings together new readings and original research"-- "The poem includes an extensive catalogue of the people, places, and things that the child enthusiastically embraces in the course of his journey, all linked together by the idiosyncratic ellipses Whitman used throughout the 1855 Leaves of Grass. The poem closes, 'These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes and will always go forth every day, / And these become of him or her that peruses them now'(LG55, 91). With this parting comment that anyone who 'peruses' his poetry becomes part of a collective poetic experience, Whitman confirms that his poems come most spectacularly to life when taken in context - both the contexts of their original composition and the multiple contexts of their reception throughout time and space. As such, our goal with Walt Whitman in Context has been to explore the poetry, fiction, notebooks, journalism, government records, and non-fiction prose of one the world's great writers through brief and provocative essays that place Whitman within the geographic, literary, cultural, and political contexts of his life. It is worth noting that the present volume is not Contexts for Walt Whitman; that is, it is not a primer on the history and culture of the nineteenth-century United States. Rather, Walt Whitman in Context provides readings, interpretations, and explorations of Whitman in the many contexts through which he charted his life and wrote his texts"--