Winslow Homer, The Fog Warning, 1885, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, US.
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
Performer - Culture & Literature
Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella,
Margaret Layton © 2012
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
1. Walt Whitman: life
•
He was born in New York into a
working-class family in 1819.
•
He had little formal education.
•
At eleven he started to work as
an office boy and then became
a printer’s apprentice for a local
newspaper.
Walt Whitman
•
He became a journalist
supporting radical
democratic causes.
Performer - Culture & Literature
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
1. Walt Whitman: life
• He travelled widely through
his country.
• He acquired a self-taught culture
including the Bible, Homer,
Dante, Shakespeare, Carlyle,
Goethe, Hegel, Emerson,
oriental religion and philosophy.
•
•
In 1855 he published the first
edition of Leaves of Grass.
Walt Whitman
Nine editions followed, each containing new poems.
Performer - Culture & Literature
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
1. Walt Whitman: life
Performer - Culture & Literature
•
The third one, in 1860,
aroused the indignation of
puritanical readers and
gained Whitman a reputation
for obscenity and
homosexuality.
•
During the Civil War he
visited wounded soldiers in
the army hospitals.
•
He continued to believe in
the value of democracy and
technological progress.
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
1. Walt Whitman: life
Performer - Culture & Literature
•
The fourth edition of Leaves
of Grass (1867) contained
poems on the Civil War and
on the death of President
Lincoln.
•
In 1873 he retired to
Camden, New Jersey,
where he was visited by
admirers and disciples.
•
He died in 1892.
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
2. Walt Whitman: his influence
•
Whitman’s popularity in Europe grew in the 1870s,
especially appreciated by the Aesthetic Movement.
•
He influenced later poets such as Ezra Pound, Carl
Sandburg, and, more recently, the Beat Generation.
•
He is generally regarded as the father of American poetry,
as the first voice that was distinctly new and ‘American’.
Performer - Culture & Literature
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
3. Leaves of Grass (1855)
• Published on 4th July 
American Independence Day
• Included a preface where the
author introduced the subject
matter, the language and the
aim of his poetry.
• Not a collection of poems but
a life-long poem.
Walt Whitman
Performer - Culture & Literature
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
3. Leaves of Grass (1855)
• A total of nine different editions
published between 1855 and 1892.
• Implied a process of development
and expansion resulting from a
transcendental sense of the unity
of all things.
• All of life and experience, reality
itself, were a process, a continuing,
all-embracing flow.
Performer - Culture & Literature
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
4. Themes of Whitman’s
poetry
•
Optimism and romantic
faith in the dynamic future
of the American nation.
•
Democracy and the
‘American dream’.
•
The self-celebration of the
poet as a prophet of his
country.
•
The dignity of the individual, conceived as the unity of
body and soul.
Performer - Culture & Literature
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
5. Song of Myself
In Song of Myself Whitman divided his being into three.
• Myself  Whitman’s poetic personality
• Me self  Whitman’s inner personality
• My soul  An enigma, unexpected otherness
Performer - Culture & Literature
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
5. Song of Myself
Song of Myself celebrates the meeting between
• The
‘I’
 Whose reality is constantly questioned
• The ‘you’  The ‘other’, ‘whoever you are’
Performer - Culture & Literature
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
6. Whitman’s style
•
Use of free verse.
• Long lines where rhythm is
determined by the thought or
emotion expressed.
•
Use of accumulation and addition.
• The participle often replaces the
finite verb.
•
Use of dialect and common speech.
•
Few similes and metaphors.
Performer - Culture & Literature
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
7. Emily Dickinson: life
•
She was born into a middleclass Puritan family in
Amherst, Massachusetts, in
1830.
•
Her father, a lawyer and a
politician, influenced her
emotional development and
religious belief.
•
She received her university
education at Mount Holyoke
Female Seminary.
Performer - Culture & Literature
Emily Dickinson
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
7. Emily Dickinson: life
•
She refused to declare her faith in
public, as required by the Puritan
tradition.
•
She interrupted her studies and
returned home.
•
She began a life of seclusion and
only wore white clothes as
ambiguous emblems of spiritual
marriage and singleness.
•
She never left her father’s house
except for some walks in the garden.
Performer - Culture & Literature
Emily Dickinson
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
7. Emily Dickinson: life
•
She died in 1886.
•
Poems by Emily Dickinson
appeared in 1890 published by
the literary critic Thomas W.
Higginson.
•
A complete edition of her poems
appeared in 1955, edited by
Thomas Johnson.
•
A collection of her letters was
published in 1958.
Performer - Culture & Literature
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
8. Influences on Dickinson
•
The Bible, Shakespeare,
Milton, the Metaphysical
poets.
•
Contemporary writers like
Emily Brontë.
•
The Puritan tradition.
•
Emerson’s
Transcendentalism.
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The Homestead,
East Facade
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
9. Dickinson vs. Whitman
Emily Dickinson
• The poet of what is broken
and absent.
• Detached from
contemporary taste, from
the great events and
contrasts of the age.
• Poetry of isolation.
• Used her poetry to
challenge received
certainties.
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Walt Whitman
• The poet of wholeness.
• Deeply interested and
involved in the issues of his
time.
• Poetry of celebration.
• His task was to respond to
the spirit of his country, to
give voice to the common
man.
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
10. Themes in Dickinson’s
poetry
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Death and loss.
Love and desire.
Time.
Fear, sorrow and despair.
God.
Nature.
Man’s relation to the
universe.
Performer - Culture & Literature
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
11. The theme of death
Death from the point of view of:
•the person dying;
•a witness.
Death  the great mystery, connected with eternity, a
liberation from anxiety.
Death  the place where the human being tends to, in order
to become one with the universe.
Performer - Culture & Literature
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
12. The theme of love
Love is explored through a full range of emotions:
•from ecstatic and sensual celebration
•to the despair due to separation.
•Love  expectation of eternity as the hope of a final spiritual
union.
Performer - Culture & Literature
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
13. The theme of nature
Different from man: a source of wonder or fear.
Can be presented:
•through an objective description;
•by juxtaposing the thing observed and the soul of the
observer  the natural datum leads to philosophical
speculation;
•as a source of imagery to emphasise an abstract concept or
theme.
Performer - Culture & Literature
Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson
14. Dickinson’s style
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Poems do not have a title.
• Short poems, organised in simple
quatrains.
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Use of monosyllabic words.
• Terms from various sources:
law, geometry, engineering.
• Use of rhetorical devices such as
imperfect rhymes, assonance, alliteration,
paradox, metaphor, ellipsis and capitalisation.
•
Extensive use of dashes.
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