WaltWhitman.ppt

Walt Whitman America’s Poet Birth and Early Career Born 31 May 1819 near Huntington, Long Island, New York Second child (of 8) born to Walter and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. Works as printer’s apprentice (to 1835) and as a schoolteacher. The Journalist, 1844 Worked for several different newspapers Wrote short fiction from 1841-1848 Themes and techniques borrowed from Poe and Hawthorne The Brooklyn Eagle 1846-1848. Becomes chief editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, a post he holds from from March 5, 1846 to January 18, 1848. In May 1848, Whitman is fired because his politics conflict with those of the publisher. A “free soil.” Whitman opposes the expansion of slavery into new territories. “Pulp Fiction” Franklin Evans, 1842 Temperance novel Sold 20,000 copies, more than any other work Whitman published in his lifetime New Orleans Lives in New Orleans for 4 months as editor of the Daily Crescent. Sees slavery and slave-markets at first hand Experiences with nature (“live oaks, with moss”) and with French language later appear in his poetry. Influences: Literature and Music Italian opera: “Were it not for the opera, I could never have written Leaves of Grass.” Shakespeare, especially Richard III. Whitman saw Junius Brutus Booth (father of John Wilkes Booth) perform. The Bible Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus Emerson Emerson helped Whitman to “find himself”: “I was simmering, simmering; Emerson brought me to a boil.” Literary Acquaintances Edgar Allan Poe William Cullen Bryant Amos Bronson Alcott Henry David Thoreau Friends at Pfaff’s Restaurant (“Bohemians”)(1859-1862) Elihu Vedder, E.C. Stedman, Ada Clare, Henry Clapp Whitman and Phrenology July 16, 1849: A phrenological颅相学.examination confirms Whitman’s sense of his own character, revealing bumps of “Sympathy, Sublimity, and Self-Esteem” along with the “dangerous fault of sloth.” Whitman in 1854 His friend Dr. Maurice Bucke called this “the Christ likeness” in which the poet as seer begins to emerge. In Leaves of Gr