Description
Book SynopsisThis book analyses Whitman's integrated life, writings, and government work in his urban context to reevaluate the writer and the nation's capital in a time of transformation.
Trade ReviewThe virtue of Whitman in Washington is that it keeps tensions in place, and plumbs paradox, palpably wrestling with the legacy of Whitman in the moment and calling us to our own reckoning of him and his work for the future. * Tyler Hoffman, American Literary History *
Price works to untangle Whitman's complex, often contradictory, racial attitudes, showing through close readings and rich culture and aesthetic contextualization how his views of African Americans during slavery changed once emancipation occurred... The virtue of Whitman in Washington is that it keeps tensions in place, and plumbs paradox, palpably wrestling with the legacy of Whitman in the moment and calling us to our own reckoning with him and his work for the future. * Tyler Hoffman, American Literary History *
No other book has done so much to trace the contradictions inherent in the poet's work for the government and analyze the role it may have played in his poetry and politics. * Martin T. Buinicki, Valparaiso University *
Written with clarity and impressively researched, this study offers a remarkable picture of a key period in Whitman's life. * J. W. Miller, CHOICE *
Table of ContentsPreface 1: Whitman, Washington, and the Convulsiveness of Civil War 2: Whitman as a Paradoxical 'Missionary to the Wounded' 3: Strayed Cattle: Anti-Pastoralism in Whitman's War Writings 4: Social Calamity, Personal Perturbations, and Office Decorum: How Leaves of Grass Grew Pensive 5: Multi-racial Democracy and Black Democratic Vistas Works Cited
