The Whitman Revolution: Sex, Poetry, and Politics

by Betsy Erkkila

Overview

The Whitman Revolution brings together a rich collection of Betsy Erkkila’s phenomenally influential essays that have been published over the years, along with two powerful new essays. Erkkila offers a moving account of the inseparable mix of the spiritual-sexual-political in Whitman and the absolute centrality of male-male connection to his work and thinking. Her work has been at the forefront of scholarship positing that Whitman’s songs are songs not only of workers and occupations but of sex and the body, homoeroticism, and liberation. What is more, Erkkila’s writing demonstrates that this sexuality and communal impulse is central to Whitman’s revolutionary poetry and his conception of democracy itself—an insight that was all but suppressed during the mid-twentieth century emergence of American literature as a field of study.

Highlights of this collection include Erkkila’s essays on pairings such as Marx and Whitman, Dickinson and Whitman, and Melville and Whitman. Across the volume, she demonstrates an international vision that highlights the place of Leaves of Grass within a global struggle for democracy. The Whitman Revolution is evidence of Erkkila’s remarkable ability to lead critical discussions, and marks an exciting event in Whitman studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609387228
Publisher:	University of Iowa Press
Publication date:	12/15/2020
Series:	Iowa Whitman Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	306
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Betsy Erkkila is Henry Sanborn Noyes Professor of Literature at Northwestern University. She is author of Mixed Bloods and Other Crosses: Rethinking American Literature from the Revolution to the Culture Wars. She lives in Wilmette, Illinois.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Abbreviations xi

Introduction: The Whitman Revolution 1

Part 1 Revolutionary Poetics

Chapter 1 "The Federal Mother": Whitman as Revolutionary Son 31

Chapter 2 Whitman and the Politics of Language 51

Part 2 "In Paths Untrodden"

Chapter 3 "Song of Myself" and the Politics of the Body Erotic 69

Chapter 4 Whitman and the Homosexual Republic 79

Chapter 5 Radical Imaginaries: Crossing Over with Whitman and Dickinson 101

Part 3 The Revolutionary Transatlantic

Chapter 6 Whitman, Marx, and the American 1848 123

Chapter 7 Insurrection, the Paris Commune, and Leaves of Grass 145

Part 4 Democratic Vistas

Chapter 8 Whitman, Melville, and the Tribulations of Democracy 163

Chapter 9 Public Love: Whitman and Political Theory 201

Notes 225

Bibliography 245

Index 257

What People are Saying About This

Kenneth M. Price

“In this outstanding collection of essays, Betsy Erkkila situates Whitman within the global struggle for democracy, and confirms her place as the preeminent scholar of Whitman’s politics.”—Kenneth M. Price, author, Whitman in Washington: Becoming the National Poet in the Federal City

Editorial Reviews

In this outstanding collection of essays, Betsy Erkkila situates Whitman within the global struggle for democracy, and confirms her place as the preeminent scholar of Whitman’s politics.”—Kenneth M. Price, author, Whitman in Washington: Becoming the National Poet in the Federal City

From the Publisher