Leaves of Grass

by Whitman, Walt; Loving, Jerome

• ISBN13: 9780192834096
• ISBN10: 0192834096
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-10-22
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Whitman is today regarded as America's Homer or Dante, and his work the touchstone for literary originality in the New World. In Leaves of Grass, he abandoned the rules of traditional poetry - breaking the standard metred line, discarding the obligatory rhyming scheme, and using thevernacular. Emily Dickinson condemned his sexual and physiological allusions as 'disgraceful', but Emerson saw the book as the 'most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed'. A century later it is his judgement of this autobiographical vision of the vigour of theAmerican nation that has proved the more enduring. This is the most up-to-date edition for student use, with full critical apparatus.

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii	(16)
Note on the Text	xxiii	(2)
Select Bibliography	xxv	(2)
A Chronology of Walt Whitman	xxvii
LEAVES OF GRASS	1	(438)
Appendix A 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass	439	(24)
Appendix B Emerson to Whitman, 21 July 1855	463	(2)
Explanatory Notes	465	(8)
Index	473