Walt Whitman’s Multitudes
Labor Reform and Persona in Whitman’s Journalism and the First "Leaves of Grass</I>, 1840-1855
©2008
Monographs
X,
170 Pages
Summary
In the fifteen years before the publication of Leaves of Grass (1855), Walt Whitman constructed three authoritative voices by which he engaged the upheavals endemic to the Industrial Revolution. Through these public personas, found mostly in his journalism, Whitman offered remedies for American artisans who had lost their economic autonomy and status. Instead of attacking broad forces beyond worker control, Whitman blamed artisans for oppressing themselves through the temptations of consumerism and affectation. Walt Whitman’s Multitudes places the first edition of Leaves of Grass on par with Whitman’s journalism and exposes a writer different from most poetry-directed analyses. In doing so, it traces Whitman’s public voice as he wrestled intimately with the debates of his day: conspicuous consumption, nativism, slavery, and, through it all, labor and the status of the new working class.
Details
- Pages
- X, 170
- Publication Year
- 2008
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9781433101533
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9781433103834
- Language
- English
- Keywords
- Arbeitswelt (Motiv) American Literature Whitman, Walt Wirtschaftsreform (Motiv) Sozialreform (Motiv) Geschichte 1840-1855 U.S. History Labor consumerism nativism slavery
- Published
- New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien, 2008. X, 170 pp.