• The father of free verse
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LIFE
• Born in to a workingclass family
• poor＆semiliterate(半文 盲)parents, only 5-6 years formal education ,self-educated.
• Work as an office boy ,printing worker, school teacher, freelance writer.
words or phrases at the beginning of the line, in the middle or at the end)
E.g. I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to
world) • Pursuit of love and happiness
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Features of Whitman’s poetry
1. The use of a certain pronoun “I” 2. Two principles • Parallelism or a rhyme of thought • Phonetic recurrence ( the repetition of
filth;” Whittier throw and England.
it into fire.)
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Major Themes in His Poetry
• Equality of things and beings • Divinity of everything • Multiplicity of nature • Self-reliant spirit • Death, beauty of death • Expansion of America • Brotherhood and social solidarity (unity of nations in the
Memoranda During the War《战争回忆录》
Specimen Days (1882)《典型的日子》
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Major works
• Leaves of Grass 草叶集 • Drum-Taps 桴鼓集
• Song of Myself 自我之歌 • I sit and look out 坐观世间 • O captain, my caption • When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d 最近紫丁香在庭
• Supporting slavery abolishing
• Severed as volunteer nurse during civil war
• Unmarried all his life 4
Whitman’s Poetry
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Franklin Evans (1842) 《弗兰克林 • 埃文斯》
• Grass—the most common thing with the greatest vitality, as a common of rising American
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The title “Leaves of Grass”
1. A symbol of Whitman’s poems 2. A manifestation of Whitman’s democratic ideas 3. A symbol of new Americans with their American spirit
院开放的时候 • I hear American singings
Leaves of Grass
Where there is earth, where there is water, there is grass.
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Leaves of Grass
• First published in 1855 with only 12 poems
Walt Whitman (1819 –1892)
主讲：17 制作：16
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introduction
• an American poet, essayist, journalist, e transition between Transcendentalism and Realism
• (“noxious weeds;” • With appearance of the
“ p o e t r y o f 5th edition, Whitman
barbarism;” “a b e g a n r e c e i v e d
m a s s o f s t u p i d recognition in America
• 9 editions and last edition includes more than 400 poems
• written in a new kind of versification called free verse.
• Celebrates the ideals of equality, democracy, the dignity, self-reliant spirit and joy of common people
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Reception of Leaves of Grass
• R e c e i v e d h a r s h • Welcomed by Emerson / criticism because of “the most extraordinary breaking the poetic piece of wit and wisdom convention and its that an American has yet sexuality and exotic contributed.” and vulgar language