Whitman & Dickinson PPT

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.

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He had little formal education.

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At eleven he started to work as an office boy and then became a printer’s apprentice for a local newspaper. Walt Whitman

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He became a journalist supporting radical democratic causes.

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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. •

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In 1855 he published the first edition of Leaves of Grass.

Walt Whitman

Nine editions followed, each containing new poems.

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Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson

1. Walt Whitman: life

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The third one, in 1860, aroused the indignation of puritanical readers and gained Whitman a reputation for obscenity and homosexuality.

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During the Civil War he visited wounded soldiers in the army hospitals.

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He continued to believe in the value of democracy and technological progress.

Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson

1. Walt Whitman: life

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The fourth edition of Leaves of Grass (1867) contained poems on the Civil War and on the death of President Lincoln.

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In 1873 he retired to Camden, New Jersey, where he was visited by admirers and disciples.

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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.

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He influenced later poets such as Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, and, more recently, the Beat Generation.

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He is generally regarded as the father of American poetry, as the first voice that was distinctly new and ‘American’.

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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

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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.

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Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson

4. Themes of Whitman’s poetry •

Optimism and romantic faith in the dynamic future of the American nation.

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Democracy and the ‘American dream’.

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The self-celebration of the poet as a prophet of his country.

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The dignity of the individual, conceived as the unity of body and soul.

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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

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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’

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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.

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Few similes and metaphors.

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Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson

7. Emily Dickinson: life •

She was born into a middleclass Puritan family in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830.

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Her father, a lawyer and a politician, influenced her emotional development and religious belief.

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She received her university education at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.

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Emily Dickinson

Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson

7. Emily Dickinson: life •

She refused to declare her faith in public, as required by the Puritan tradition.

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She interrupted her studies and returned home.

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She began a life of seclusion and only wore white clothes as ambiguous emblems of spiritual marriage and singleness.

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She never left her father’s house except for some walks in the garden.

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Emily Dickinson

Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson

7. Emily Dickinson: life •

She died in 1886.

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Poems by Emily Dickinson appeared in 1890 published by the literary critic Thomas W. Higginson.

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A complete edition of her poems appeared in 1955, edited by Thomas Johnson.

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A collection of her letters was published in 1958.

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Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson

8. Influences on Dickinson •

The Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, the Metaphysical poets.

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Contemporary writers like Emily Brontë.

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The Puritan tradition.

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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. Performer - Culture & Literature

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson

14. Dickinson’s style •

Poems do not have a title.

• Short poems, organised in simple quatrains. •

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.

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Extensive use of dashes.

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