Walt Whitman’s Multitudes: Labor Reform and Persona in Whitman’s Journalism and the First "Leaves of Grass", 1840-1855 - Hardcover

Stacy, Jason

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 143310153X ISBN 13: 9781433101533

Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing Inc, 2008

Synopsis

In the fifteen years before the publication of Leaves of Grass (1855), Walt Whitman constructed three authoritative voices by which he engaged the upheavals endemic to the Industrial Revolution. Through these public personas, found mostly in his journalism, Whitman offered remedies for American artisans who had lost their economic autonomy and status. Instead of attacking broad forces beyond worker control, Whitman blamed artisans for oppressing themselves through the temptations of consumerism and affectation. Walt Whitman’s Multitudes places the first edition of Leaves of Grass on par with Whitman’s journalism and exposes a writer different from most poetry-directed analyses. In doing so, it traces Whitman’s public voice as he wrestled intimately with the debates of his day: conspicuous consumption, nativism, slavery, and, through it all, labor and the status of the new working class.

About this title

About the Author

The Author: Jason Stacy received his Ph.D. in history from Loyola University Chicago. He is Assistant Professor of U.S. History at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

Edition details

• Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing Inc
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 143310153X
• ISBN 13: 9781433101533
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 180