A Historical Guide to Walt Whitman [Paperback]

Few authors are so well suited to historical study as Whitman, who is widely considered America's greatest poet. ThisGuidecombines contemporary cultural studies and historical scholarship to illuminate Whitman's diverse contexts. The essays explore dimensions of Whitman's dynamic relationship to working-class politics, race and slavery, sexual mores, the visual arts, and the idea of democracy. The poet who emerges from this volume is no solitary singer, distanced from his culture, but what he himself called the age transfigured, fully enmeshed in his times and addressing issues that are still vital today.

Introduction,David S. Reynolds
Capsule Biography,David S. Reynolds
Lucifer and Ethiopia: Whitman, Race, and Poetics before and after the Civil War,Ed Folsom
The Political Roots of the FirstLeaves of Grass,Jerome Loving
Whitman's Calamus : A Rhetorical Prehistory of the Gay American Ethos,M. Jimmie Killingsworth
Whitman and the Visual Arts,Roberta K. Tarbell
To Be Free and Rule: Whitman on the Razor's Edge,Kenneth Cmiel
Bibliographical Essay,David S. Reynolds
Dual Chronology,David S. Reynolds

David S. Reynoldsis Distinguished Professor of American Literature at Baruch College in New York. His publications includeWalt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography(1995).