Song of Ourselves: Walt Whitman and the Fight for Democracy
Mark Edmundson, "Song of Ourselves: Walt Whitman and the Fight for Democracy"
English | ISBN: 0674237161 | 2021 | 240 pages | PDF | 12 MB
English | ISBN: 0674237161 | 2021 | 240 pages | PDF | 12 MB
In the midst of a crisis of democracy, we have much to learn from Walt Whitman’s journey toward egalitarian selfhood.
Walt Whitman knew a great deal about democracy that we don’t. Most of that knowledge is concentrated in one stunning poem, Song of Myself.
Esteemed cultural and literary thinker Mark Edmundson offers a bold reading of the 1855 poem, included here in its entirety. He finds in the poem the genesis and development of a democratic spirit, for the individual and the nation. Whitman broke from past literature that he saw as “feudal”: obsessed with the noble and great. He wanted instead to celebrate the common and everyday.
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