Walt Whitman
One major theme in Whitman is what he frankly refers to as "the love of comrades…the manly love of comrades." (Whitman, "A Song"). Although Walt Whitman is frequently but inaccurately claimed as a "gay" poet -- even though Leaves of Grass was published decades before the words "gay" or "homosexual" had entered the English lexicon -- it is clear that the role this plays in his writing is political. Whitman wrote in a country that was still a democratic experiment: "Song of Myself" predates the U.S. Civil War, which nearly caused the utter failure of that democratic experiment.
As we live in a historical moment when we can witness the struggles of democracy worldwide, it is particularly interesting to consider Whitman's emotional (and possibly even sexual) commitment to the idea of democracy. Maire Mullins notes that Whitman made great use of the contemporary pseudoscience of phrenology, the practice of generalizing about human character by reading the shape of the skull. (In 2013 phrenology has had a moment in pop culture, when Leonardo DiCaprio delivers a phrenological monologue in the Tarantino film "Django Unchained." ) But for Whitman, phrenology was...
Dante's Inferno The opening section of Dante's poetic series, which he wrote in the 1400s is called The Inferno, which means 'Hell' in Italian. The titles under the series christened the Divine Comedy are Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, and they tell of a voyage through a primitive picture of Hell, a place that Dante portrays as nine rings of torment. The journey of a soul towards God with the identification and
In other words, Whitman is seeking to illustrate why the personal identity of the woman or himself is unimportant regarding the events of the poem. While it may have seemed important in the beginning of the events that the woman was the woman and Whitman was Whitman, by the end of this progression, these distinctions are meaningless. This is one of the fundamental obstacles to defining personal identity: sameness
. . " "I don't recall having sold the house," Ned said, "and the girls are at home." (Cheever) In the narration Ned continues on his journey home. Once he is home it is revealed that his house is indeed empty and his wife and daughters are gone. This is just one example of the conflict that exist in this narration between was is reality and what is illusion. In addition to this
Rousseau, Douglass, both prose writers; Whitman, Tennyson and Wordsworth, all three, poets. What bind them together, what is their common denominator? Nationalism, democracy, love for the common man, singing praises for the ordinary man on the street, fighting for the rights of the poor, seeking the liberation of the downtrodden from oppression, glorifying the human being - man! These are elements that are common to them. Jean Jacques Rousseau Consider Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Whitman, Harper, Alcott American literature in the nineteenth century is necessarily concerned with democracy: by the time of the U.S. Civil War the American democratic experiment was not even a century old, and as a result writers remained extremely sensitive until the end of the century toward questions of whether America was capable of living up to the high ideals that it had set for itself in its founding documents. An
Art "Howl" and "Guernica" Outline The paper demonstrates the ways in which both pieces of art contemplate and express multiple themes, including those of religion, morality, happiness, life-affirmation, and freedom. "Howl" is a poem that is both a mourning and a celebration of life. "Guernica" is an expression of pain and war. Both works of art have many themes and many of the same themes. Ginserb, the 1950s, and "Howl" He composed the poem in the middle
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now