To Walt Whitman, America

Resource Information

The work To Walt Whitman, America represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in San Francisco Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

To Walt Whitman, America

Statement of responsibility

Kenneth M. Price

Creator

• Price, Kenneth M

Contributor

• hoopla digital

Subject

• National characteristics, American, in literature
• United States -- In literature
• Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892 -- Appreciation -- United States
• Electronic books
• Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892 -- Knowledge -- United States
• Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892 -- Criticism and interpretation | History

Language

eng

Summary

Walt Whitman "is America," according to Ezra Pound. More than a century after his death, Whitman's name regularly appears in political speeches, architectural inscriptions, television programs, and films, and it adorns schools, summer camps, truck stops, corporate centers, and shopping malls. In an analysis of Whitman as a quintessential American icon, Kenneth Price shows how his ubiquity and his extraordinarily malleable identity have contributed to the ongoing process of shaping the character of the United States.Price examines Whitman's own writings as well as those of writers who were influenced by him, paying particular attention to Whitman's legacies for an ethnically and sexually diverse America. He focuses on fictional works by Edith Wharton, D. H. Lawrence, John Dos Passos, Ishmael Reed, and Gloria Naylor, among others. In Price's study, Leaves of Grass emerges as a living document accruing meanings that evolve with time and with new readers, with Whitman and his words regularly pulled into debates over immigration, politics, sexuality, and national identity. As Price demonstrates, Whitman is a recurring starting point, a provocation, and an irresistible, rewritable text for those who reinvent the icon in their efforts to remake America itself

Cataloging source

Midwest

Dewey number

811/.3

Index

no index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Target audience

adult