The Cambridge Companion to Walt Whitman

An introduction for students and general readers to a variety of contemporary issues in Whitman's life and art.

The essays collected here, written for this volume by an international team of distinguished Whitman scholars, examine a variety of issues in Whitman's life and art. Their varying approaches mirror the diversity of contemporary scholarship and the breadth of target that Whitman affords for such examination. The authors of these essays address a wide range of issues befitting a poet of his stature and ambiguity: Whitman and photography, Whitman and feminist scholarship, Whitman and modernism, Whitman and the poetics of address, Whitman and the poetics of present participles, Whitman and Borges, Whitman and Isadora Duncan, Whitman and the Civil War, Whitman and the politics of his era, and Whitman and the changing nature of his style in his later years. Addressed to an audience of students and general readers and written in a nontechnical prose designed to promote accessibility to the study of Whitman, this volume includes a chronology of Whitman's life and suggestions for further reading.

List of illustrations; List of contributors; Chronology of Whitman's life; 1. Introduction Ezra Greenspan; 2. 'As if I were with you' - the performance of Whitman's poetry Stephen Railton; 3. Fratricide and brotherly love: Whitman and the Civil War M. Wynn Thomas; 4. Reading Whitman's post-war poetry James Perrin Warren; 5. Politics and poetry: Leaves of Grass and the social crisis of the 1850s David S. Reynolds; 6. Some remarks on the poetics of 'Participle-loving Whitman' Ezra Greenspan; 7. 'Being a woman … I wish to give my own view': some nineteenth-century women's responses to the 1860 Leaves of Grass Sherry Ceniza; 8. Appearing in print: illustrations of the self in Leaves of Grass Ed Folsom; 9. 'I sing the body electric': Isadora Duncan, Whitman and the dance Ruth L. Bohan; 10. Walt Whitman: precipitant of the modern Alan Trachtenberg; 11. Borges's 'Song of myself' Fernando Alegría; Suggestions for further reading; Index; Whitman's writings.

The essays collected here, written for this volume by an international team of distinguished Whitman scholars, examine a variety of contemporary issues in Whitman's life and art. The essays address a wide range of issues including Whitman and photography, Whitman and feminist scholarship, Whitman and modernism, Whitman and Borges, Whitman and Isadora Duncan, Whitman and the Civil War, Whitman and the politics of his era, and Whitman and the changing nature of his style in his later years.