Breaking Bounds Whitman and American Cultural Studies

by Erkkila, Betsy; Grossman, Jay

• ISBN13: 9780195093506
• ISBN10: 019509350X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-02-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Breaking Bounds invigorates the study of Whitman and American culture by presenting essays that demonstrate Whitman's centrality to the widest range of social, political, literary, sexual, and cultural discourses of his time and ours. Bringing together a distinguished group of cultural critics working in the fields of literature, American studies, Latin American studies, European studies, art history, and gay/lesbian/queer studies, the volume persistently opens new vistas in the ways we see Whitman and provides a model for the newest and brightest intellectual efforts associated with "cultural studies." Central to the volume is a set of provocative essays in queer studies that break the bounds of decorum that have too long separated Whitman's sexuality from his politics, and his poetry from both. The Whitman that emerges from these collected essays is renewed for a new generation of literary scholars working to define the places and the functions of his poetic words in the world. Taken as a whole, the volume points to the interdisciplinary future of American literary and cultural studies. Breaking Bounds is essential reading for anyone interested in Whitman both inside and outside the academy.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	p. xi
Introduction: Breaking Bounds	p. 1
Genealogies
Confusion of Tongues	p. 23
Whitman Drunk	p. 30
Whitman and Problems of the Vernacular	p. 44
Whitman, Syntax, and Political Theory	p. 62
America's Whitmans
His America, Our America: Jose Marti Reads Whitman	p. 83
"In Loftiest Spheres": Whitman's Visionary Feminism	p. 92
Whitman's "Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand": Remarks on the Endlessly Repeated Rediscovery of the Incommensurability of the Person	p. 112
Errata sobre la erotica, or, the Elision of Whitman's Body	p. 123
Whitman's Americas
Homosexuality and Utopian Discourse in American Poetry	p. 135
America on Canvas, America in Manuscript: Imaging the Democracy	p. 147
Whitman's Lesson of the City	p. 163
Making Capital: War, Labor, and Whitman in Washington, D.C.	p. 174
Legacies
Whitman's Calamus Photographs	p. 193
"When the World Strips Down and Rouges Up": Redressing Whitman	p. 220
"For America--For All the Earth": Walt Whitman as an International(ist) Poet	p. 238
Epilogue: Whitman's Centennial and the State of Whitman Studies	p. 251
Bibliography	p. 265
Contributors	p. 277
Index	p. 280
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