Essays

Love of Comrades: The Urbanization of Community in Walt Whitman's Poetry and Pragmatist Philosophy

Authors: Frances Dickey , M. Jimmie Killingsworth

Abstract

Argues that "the social crisis produced by urbanization shaped Whitman's poetry and pragmatist thought in similar ways," and examines Whitman's struggles with skepticism and relativism in light of his straddling of rural and urban experience, finding that Whitman's "untamed flow of sympathy" in his urban poems of 1855 and 1856 gives way to an increasing "urbane doubt" and "withdrawal from the city" in his 1860 "Calamus" poems.

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How to Cite: Dickey, F. & Killingsworth, M. J. (2003) “Love of Comrades: The Urbanization of Community in Walt Whitman's Poetry and Pragmatist Philosophy”, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. 21(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.13008/2153-3695.1717