Violence in Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"

Patricia Lee Yongue

doi:10.13008/2153-3695.1043

Essays

Violence in Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"

Abstract

Offers a reading of "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" that demonstrates how Whitman uses the poem to sublimate the violence of Lincoln's assassination, so that "what on the purely historical level is a man's unnatural death at the hands of another man--a violent 'crime'--becomes on more symbolic levels a natural, necessary creative event."

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How to Cite: Yongue, P. L. (1984) “Violence in Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"”, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. 1(4). doi: https://doi.org/10.13008/2153-3695.1043