Student 1
Sassy Student
Dickinson
English IV AP
20 February 2015
Annotated Bibliography
Brand, Dana. "Urbanization." American History Through Literature 1820-1870. Ed. Janet
Gabler-Hover and Robert Sattelmeyer. Vol. 3. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006.
1214-1219. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 19 Feb. 2015.
Dana Brand’s article is mainly focused on Walt Whitman’s use of setting. She begins by
introducing America’s nineteenth century urbanization, and then describes the effect it had on
literature and writing at the time. Brand argues that Whitman is attempting to portray the beauty
of objects found in urban life—buildings, roads, and such—in the same way that Romantic
writers like William Wordsworth portrayed the beauty of nature. She states that Whitman is
rejecting the ideas of anti-urbanism, claiming that developing an urban lifestyle is America’s
historical destiny.
Miller, James Edwin. "Wandering the Open Road." Leaves of Grass: America's Lyric-Epic of
Self and Democracy. New York: Twayne, 1992. 66-80. Twayne's Masterwork Studies 92.
Twayne's Authors on GVRL. Web. 19 Feb. 2015.
James Miller’s article discusses the sense of unity that Walt Whitman creates in the
poem. He notes that, in contrast to many of Whitman’s other poems which focus on the “self,”
“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” focuses on the many, and the way that they are all connected. He
compares the poem to those of Whitman’s contemporaries, all of which discuss the unity of
Student 2
mankind on a spiritual level, furthering the reading of the poem as a transcendentalist work that
Dana Brand presents.
Rudden, Patricia Spence. "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry." American History Through Literature
1820-1870. Ed. Janet Gabler-Hover and Robert Sattelmeyer. Vol. 1. Detroit: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 2006. 296-299. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 19 Feb. 2015.
In this article, Patricia Spence Rudden, discusses the transcendental nature of Whitman’s
poem and connects “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” with some of Whitman’s other works which also
include ferries. Rudden addresses the way Whitman writes to both people in his present time and
people in the future, implying that they are all connected. The sense of connectedness that
Whitman creates through his diction and tone is also mentioned, as well as the manner in which
Whitman shifts in the last section of the poem to address future readers. Rudden’s main
argument is that Walt Whitman’s poem is a transcendentalist work meant to portray the ideas of
philosophers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson.