"If He Be Not Himself the Age Transfigured": The Poet, the "Cultivating Class," and Whitman's 1855 "Song of Myself"

Barbara Clancy

doi:10.13008/2153-3695.1492

Essays

"If He Be Not Himself the Age Transfigured": The Poet, the "Cultivating Class," and Whitman's 1855 "Song of Myself"

Abstract

Explores how Whitman defined issues of class in his poetry in an effort to address the working people of the United States and describes the poet's "attack on oppositional categorization" as an effort "to provide a common ground between the poet and his people," showing that Whitman "removed his subjects to a 'place' away from the 'pulling and hauling' in order to preserve his own poetic role as the transcender of oppositions."

Keywords:

How to Cite: Clancy, B. (1996) “"If He Be Not Himself the Age Transfigured": The Poet, the "Cultivating Class," and Whitman's 1855 "Song of Myself"”, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. 14(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.13008/2153-3695.1492