The Routledge Encyclopedia of Walt Whitman presents a comprehensive resource complied by over 200 internationally recognized contributors, including such leading Whitman scholars as James E. Miller, Jr., Roger Asselineau, Betsy Erkkila, and Joel Myerson. Now available for the first time in paperback, this volume comprises more than 750 entries arranged in convenient alphabetical format. Coverage includes: biographical information: all names, dates, places, and events important to understanding Whitman's life and careerWhitman's works: essays on all eight editions of Leaves of Grass, major poems and poem clusters, principal essays and prose works, as well as his more than two dozen short stories and the novel, Franklin Evansprominent themes and concepts: essays on such major topics as democracy, slavery, the Civil War, immortality, sexuality, and the women's rights movement.significant forms and techniques: such as prosody, symbolism, free verse, and humourimportant trends and critical approaches in Whitman studies: including new historicist and cultural criticism, psychological explorations, and controversial issues of sexual identitysurveys of Whitman's international impact as well as an assessment of his literary legacy. Useful for students, researchers, librarians, teachers, and Whitman devotees, this volume features extensive cross-references, numerous photographs of the poet, a chronology, a special appendix section tracking the poet's genealogy, and a thorough index. Each entry includes a bibliography for further study.

Includes almost 760 entries ranging in length from 3,100 words on the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass to 140 words on Elizabeth Leavitt Keller. Entries include biographical data; thematic, formal and technical considerations; discussions of the poet's social and personal life; and commentary on all of Whitman's works, including poem clusters, major poems, essays, and lesser known works such as the novel Franklin Evans and two dozen short stories. A chronology and genealogy are included. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Through a close reading of Leaves of Grass, its constituent poems, particularly Song of Myself and Whitman's prose and letters, Aspiz charts how the poet's exuberant celebration of life is a consequence of his central concern: the ever presence of death and the prospect of an afterlife.

Since 1855, Walt Whitman's Song of Myself has been enjoyed, debated, parodied and imitated by readers, critics and artists crossing national and linguistic boundaries. Many argue that it is the most influential poem ever written by an American. This sourcebook and critical edition provides easy access to: * information on the contexts of Whitman's work, including biographical details and a chronology * an overview of the critical reception of the poem and extracts from important criticism, reprinted with clear introductory headnotes * key passages from the original 1855 edition, with commentary and annotation * the full 'final' 1881 edition of the poem. Cross-references link the critical, contextual and textual sections of the volume, encouraging an integrated understanding of this creative and controversial text. Complementing a wealth of material with suggestions for further reading, this volume is ideal for readers with no knowledge of the poem, or for those returning anew to a favourite text.

Recovers Walt Whitman as a self-conscious religious figure with an ethic based in male comradeship, one at odds with the temper of his times.

The American Critical Archives is a series of reference books that provide representative selections of contemporary reviews of the main works of major American authors. Specifically, each volume contains both full reviews and excerpts from reviews that appeared in newspapers and weekly and monthly periodicals, generally within a few months of the publication of the work concerned. There is an introductory historical overview by the volume editor, as well as checklists of additional reviews located but not quoted. This volume, a significant contribution to the reception history of Leaves of Grass, Specimen Days, and other works, reproduces the full range of the contemporary reviews of Whitman's books. Brash and iconoclastic, revered and reviled at various times, Whitman - because of his bold literary experiments and frank treatment of sexuality - was accorded an astonishing array of commentary, ranging from sympathy with his "hearty wholesomeness" to hostility toward poems that were a "mass of stupid filth". Reviews by Rufus Griswold, Fanny Fern, John Burroughs, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Hamlin Garland, Oscar Wilde, and (writing anonymously) Whitman himself, as well as a host of lesser-known writers, clarify much about both the poet and nineteenth-century American culture and its tastes and preoccupations, its myopia and acuity. These reviewers, the first to frame the issues for critical debate about Whitman, shaped his long-term reputation.

Canons by Consensus is first systematic analysis of American literature textbooks used by college instructors in the last century.

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.

James Harner's popular pamphlet, first published in 1985, has been revised and updated in the light of advances in computer technology and the availability of humanities databases. Harner offers useful information on planning research, organizing an annotated bibliography, compiling entries, using a computer to prepare the manuscript, and editing. While the booklet focuses on the preparation of a comprehensive bibliography on a single literary author, the procedures and techniques are easily adapted to selective or subject bibliographies and to other periods and disciplines.