Re-Scripting Walt Whitman An Introduction to His Life and Work

by Folsom, Ed; Price, Kenneth M.

• ISBN13: 9781405118187
• ISBN10: 1405118180
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-08-19
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

"This is no book, / Who touches this touches a man," Walt Whitman famously said. Taking account of Whitman's identification of himself with his books, this introductory guide weaves together the writer's life with an examination of his works, especially his evolving masterpiece Leaves of Grass. Authors Ed Folsom and Kenneth Price examine the material conditions and products of Whitman's "scripted life," including the long-overlooked original manuscripts that illuminate his motives, ideas, and writing processes. They also investigate Whitman's "life in print," the ways that his training and experience as a printer and typesetter led him to believe that he could literally transfer his identity to the printed page and embody himself in his books. The result is an innovative introduction to Walt Whitman that focuses on those places where the writer's life and work most thoroughly meld. Ed Folsom and Kenneth Price are co-directors of the Walt Whitman Archive, and the electronic edition at www.whitmanarchive.org offers readers further opportunities for study.

Author Biography

Ed Folsom is Carver Professor of English at the University of Iowa. He is the editor of The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, co-director of the Walt Whitman Archive and the author or editor of five books on Whitman, including Walt Whitman’s Native Representations (1994) and Whitman East and West (1992).

Kenneth M. Price is the Hillegass Professor of American Literature at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He is the co-director of the Walt Whitman archive, editor of Walt Whitman: The Contemporary Reviews, and author of Whitman and Tradition: The Poet in his Century (1990) and To Walt Whitman, America (2004).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations of Whitman's Works

Introduction

Growing up in the Age of Accelerating Print: Whitman as Printer, Journalist, Teacher, and Fiction Writer

"Many Manuscript Doings and Undoings": The Road toward Leaves of Grass

"I Was Chilled with the Cold Types and Cylinder and Wet Paper Between Us": The First and Second Editions of Leaves of Grass

Intimate Script and the New American Bible: "Calamus" and the Making of the 1860 Leaves of Grass

Blood-Stained Memoranda

Reconstructing Leaves of Grass, Restructuring a Life

Dying into Leaves

Appendix: What Whitman Left Us

References

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.