Highlights the latest currents in Whitman scholarship and demonstrates how Whitman's work transforms discussions in literary studies.

Walt Whitman created, in various editions of Leaves of Grass, what is arguably the most influential book of poems anywhere in the past 200 years. Whitman absorbed the world, transmuting it into poems that address a spectrum of topics--from democracy and religion to sexuality, gender, class, and identity. He exuberantly incarnated his epoch at the same time as he invoked "you"-- readers and "poets to come"--to join in a "poetry of the future." The first A to Z Whitman reference to incorporate 21st century scholarship, this work is ideal for readers who want a concise introduction to the major poems and prose and to the people, places, and topics central to his life. Each of the book's 142 entries is followed by cross-references to related entries and suggestions for further reading. Also included are a brief biography, a chronology of Whitman's life and major works, and a bibliography of some 300 primary and secondary sources on this most timeless and contemporary of poets.

The essays in this collection are at the forefront of Pynchon studies, representing distinctively twenty-first century approaches to his work.

Uncovers new evidence and presents new ideas that invite us to reconsider our understanding Edith Wharton's life and career.

This collection reimagines Melville as both a theorist and a writer, approaching his works as philosophical forms in their own right.

The first book specifically devoted to the history and prospects of the new modernist studies.

Discusses the most recent advances in the Beckett field and the new methods used to approach it.

Presents essays by feminists of theory and literature that examine contemporary feminism and the most pressing issues of today.

Walt Whitman, Where the Future Becomes Present invigorates Whitman studies by garnering insights from a diverse group of writers and intellectuals. Writing from the perspectives of art history, political theory, creative writing, and literary criticism, the contributors place Whitman in the center of both world literature and American public life. The volume is especially notable for being the best example yet published of what the editors call the New Textuality in Whitman studies, an emergent mode of criticism that focuses on the different editions of Whitman’s poems as independent works of art.