Popular culture (commonly known as pop culture) is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes,^[1] images and other phenomena that are preferred^{[citation needed]} by an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the late 20th and early 21st century. Heavily influenced by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of the society.

Popular culture is often viewed as being trivial and dumbed-down in order to find consensual acceptance throughout the mainstream. As a result, it comes under heavy criticism from various non-mainstream sources (most notably religious groups and countercultural groups) which deem it superficial, consumerist, sensationalist, and corrupted.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]}

The term "popular culture" was coined in the 19th century or earlier^[11] to refer to the education and general "culturedness" of the lower classes, as was delivered in an address at the Birmingham Town Hall, England.^[12] The term began to assume the meaning of a culture of the lower classes separate from (and sometimes opposed to) "true education" towards the end of the century,^[13] a usage that became established by the interbellum period.^[14] The current meaning of the term, culture for mass consumption, especially originating in the United States, is established by the end of World War II.^[15] The abbreviated form "pop culture" dates to the 1960s.^[16]

Definitions[link]

Look up popular culture in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

There are multiple competing definitions of popular culture. John Storey, in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, discusses six definitions. The quantitative definition of culture has the problem that much "high culture" (e.g., television dramatizations of Jane Austen) is widely favoured. "Pop culture" is also defined as the culture that is "left over" when we have decided what high culture is. However, many works straddle or cross the boundaries, e.g., Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.

A third definition equates pop culture with "mass culture" and ideas. This is seen as a commercial culture, mass produced for mass consumption by mass media. From a Western European perspective, this may be compared to American culture.^{[clarification needed]} Alternatively, "pop culture" can be defined as an "authentic" culture of the people, but this can be problematic because there are many ways of defining the "people". Storey argues that there is a political dimension to popular culture; neo-Gramscian hegemony theory "... sees popular culture as a site of struggle between the 'resistance' of subordinate groups in society and the forces of 'incorporation' operating in the interests of dominant groups in society." A postmodernist approach to popular culture would "no longer recognize the distinction between high and popular culture".

Storey claims that popular culture emerges from the urbanization of the Industrial Revolution, which identifies the term with the usual^[which?] definitions of "mass culture". Studies of Shakespeare (by Weimann, Barber or Bristol, for example) locate much of the characteristic vitality of his drama in its participation in Renaissance popular culture, while contemporary practitioners like Dario Fo and John McGrath use popular culture in its Gramscian sense that includes ancient folk traditions (the commedia dell'arte for example).^[17][18]

Popular culture changes constantly and occurs uniquely in place and time. It forms currents and eddies, and represents a complex of mutually interdependent perspectives and values that influence society and its institutions in various ways. For example, certain currents of pop culture may originate from, (or diverge into) a subculture, representing perspectives with which the mainstream popular culture has only limited familiarity. Items of popular culture most typically appeal to a broad spectrum of the public. Important contemporary contributions for understanding what popular culture means have been given by the German researcher Ronald Daus, who studies the impact of extra-European cultures in North America, Asia and especially in Latin America.

Institutional propagation[link]

This section contains too many or too-lengthy quotations for an encyclopedic entry. Please help improve the article by editing it to take facts from excessively quoted material and rewrite them as sourced original prose. Consider transferring direct quotations to Wikiquote. (February 2011)

Popular culture and the mass media have a symbiotic relationship: each depends on the other in an intimate collaboration."

—K. Turner (1984), p.4^[19]

The news media mines the work of scientists and scholars and conveys it to the general public, often emphasizing elements that have inherent appeal or the power to amaze. For instance, giant pandas (a species in remote Chinese woodlands) have become well-known items of popular culture; parasitic worms, though of greater practical importance, have not. Both scholarly facts and news stories get modified through popular transmission, often to the point of outright falsehoods.

Hannah Arendt's 1961 essay "The Crisis in Culture" suggested that a "market-driven media would lead to the displacement of culture by the dictates of entertainment."^[20] Susan Sontag argues that in our culture, the most "...intelligible, persuasive values are [increasingly] drawn from the entertainment industries", which is "undermining of standards of seriousness." As a result, "tepid, the glib, and the senselessly cruel" topics are becoming the norm.^[20] Some critics argue that popular culture is “dumbing down”: "newspapers that once ran foreign news now feature celebrity gossip, pictures of scantily dressed young ladies... television has replaced high-quality drama with gardening, cookery, and other “lifestyle” programmes [and] reality TV and asinine soaps," to the point that people are constantly immersed in trivia about celebrity culture.^[20]

In Rosenberg and White's book Mass Culture, MacDonald argues that "Popular culture is a debased, trivial culture that voids both the deep realities (sex, death, failure, tragedy) and also the simple spontaneous pleasures... The masses, debauched by several generations of this sort of thing, in turn come to demand trivial and comfortable cultural products."^[20] Van den Haag argues that "all mass media in the end alienate people from personal experience and though appearing to offset it, intensify their moral isolation from each other, from the reality and from themselves."^[20][21]

Critics have lamented the "replacement of high art and authentic folk culture by tasteless industrialised artefacts produced on a mass scale in order to satisfy the lowest common denominator."^[20] This "mass culture emerged after the Second World War and have led to the concentration of mass-culture power in ever larger global media conglomerates." The popular press decreased the amount of news or information and replaced it with entertainment or titillation that reinforces "fears, prejudice, scapegoating processes, paranoia, and aggression."^[20]

Critics of television and film have argued that the quality of TV output has been diluted as stations pursue ratings by focusing on the "glitzy, the superficial, and the popular". In film, "Hollywood culture and values" are increasingly dominating film production in other countries. Hollywood films have changed from creating formulaic films which emphasize "shock-value and superficial thrill[s]" and the use of special effects, with themes that focus on the "basic instincts of aggression, revenge, violence, [and] greed." The plots "often seem simplistic, a standardized template taken from the shelf, and dialogue is minimal." The "characters are shallow and unconvincing, the dialogue is also simple, unreal, and badly constructed."^[20]

Folklore[link]

Adaptations based on traditional folklore provide a source of popular culture.^[22] This early layer of cultural mainstream still persists today, in a form separate from mass-produced popular culture, propagating by word of mouth rather than via mass media, e.g. in the form of jokes or urban legend. With the widespread use of the Internet from the 1990s, the distinction between mass media and word-of-mouth has become blurred.

Although the folkloric element of popular culture engages heavily with the commercial element, the public has its own tastes and it may not embrace every cultural item sold. Moreover, beliefs and opinions about the products of commercial culture spread by word-of-mouth, and become modified in the process in the same manner that folklore evolves.

Self-reference[link]

Owing to the pervasive and increasingly interconnected nature of popular culture, especially its intermingling of complementary distribution sources, some cultural anthropologists, literary, and cultural critics have identified a large amount of intertextuality in popular culture's portrayals of itself. One commentator has suggested this self-referentiality reflects the advancing encroachment of popular culture into every realm of collective experience. "Instead of referring to the real world, much media output devotes itself to referring to other images, other narratives; self-referentiality is all-embracing, although it is rarely taken account of."^[23] Furthermore, the commentary on the intertextuality and its self referential nature has itself become the subject of self referential and recursive commentary.

Many cultural critics have dismissed this as merely a symptom or side-effect of mass consumerism; however, alternate explanations and critique have also been offered. One critic asserts that it reflects a fundamental paradox: the increase in technological and cultural sophistication, combined with an increase in superficiality and dehumanization.^[24]

Long-running television series The Simpsons routinely alludes to mainstream media properties, as well as the commercial content of the show itself. In the episode "Bart vs. Thanksgiving", Bart complains about the crass commercialism of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade while watching television. When he turns his head away from the television, the screen shows an oversized inflatable balloon of Bart Simpson floating past.

According to television studies scholars specializing in quality television, such as Kristin Thompson, self-referentiality in mainstream American television (especially comedy) reflects and exemplifies the type of progression characterized previously. Thompson^[25] argues shows such as The Simpsons use a "...flurry of cultural references, intentionally inconsistent characterization, and considerable self-reflexivity about television conventions and the status of the programme as a television show."^[26] Extreme examples approach a kind of thematic infinite regress wherein distinctions between art and life, commerce and critique, ridicule and homage become intractably blurred.^[24]

See also[link]

• Cultural icon
• Fads
• High culture
• Low culture
• MTV Generation
• Culture industry
• Bread and circuses
• One-Dimensional Man
• Pop art
• Pop icon
• Popular culture studies
• Trash culture

Notes[link]

References[link]

Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman, 1887
Born	(1819-05-31)May 31, 1819 West Hills, Town of Huntington, Long Island, New York, U.S.
Died	March 26, 1892(1892-03-26) (aged 72) Camden, New Jersey, U.S.
Signature

Walter "Walt" Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.^[1] His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.

Born on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and – in addition to publishing his poetry – was a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War. Early in his career, he also produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans (1842). Whitman's major work, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money. The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892. After a stroke towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. He died at age 72 and his funeral became a public spectacle.^[2][3]

Whitman's sexuality is often discussed alongside his poetry. Though biographers continue to debate his sexuality, he is usually described as either homosexual or bisexual in his feelings and attractions.^[4] However, there is disagreement among biographers as to whether Whitman had actual sexual experiences with men.^[5] Whitman was concerned with politics throughout his life. He supported the Wilmot Proviso and opposed the extension of slavery generally. His poetry presented an egalitarian view of the races, and at one point he called for the abolition of slavery, but later he saw the abolitionist movement as a threat to democracy.^[6]

Life and work[link]

Early life[link]

Walter Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, Town of Huntington, Long Island, to parents with interests in Quaker thought, Walter and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. The second of nine children,^[7] he was immediately nicknamed "Walt" to distinguish him from his father.^[8] Walter Whitman Sr. named three of his seven sons after American leaders: Andrew Jackson, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. The oldest was named Jesse and another boy died unnamed at the age of six months. The couple's sixth son, the youngest, was named Edward.^[8] At age four, Whitman moved with his family from West Hills to Brooklyn, living in a series of homes, in part due to bad investments.^[9] Whitman looked back on his childhood as generally restless and unhappy, given his family's difficult economic status.^[10] One happy moment that he later recalled was when he was lifted in the air and kissed on the cheek by the Marquis de Lafayette during a celebration in Brooklyn on July 4, 1825.^[11]

At age eleven Whitman concluded formal schooling.^[12] He then sought employment for further income for his family; he was an office boy for two lawyers and later was an apprentice and printer's devil for the weekly Long Island newspaper the Patriot, edited by Samuel E. Clements.^[13] There, Whitman learned about the printing press and typesetting.^[14] He may have written "sentimental bits" of filler material for occasional issues.^[15] Clements aroused controversy when he and two friends attempted to dig up the corpse of Elias Hicks to create a plaster mold of his head.^[16] Clements left the Patriot shortly after, possibly as a result of the controversy.^[17]

Early career[link]

Whitman, age 28

The following summer Whitman worked for another printer, Erastus Worthington, in Brooklyn.^[18] His family moved back to West Hills in the spring, but Whitman remained and took a job at the shop of Alden Spooner, editor of the leading Whig weekly newspaper the Long-Island Star.^[18] While at the Star, Whitman became a regular patron of the local library, joined a town debating society, began attending theater performances,^[19] and anonymously published some of his earliest poetry in the New York Mirror.^[20] At age 16 in May 1835, Whitman left the Star and Brooklyn.^[21] He moved to New York City to work as a compositor^[22] though, in later years, Whitman could not remember where.^[23] He attempted to find further work but had difficulty in part due to a severe fire in the printing and publishing district^[23] and in part due to a general collapse in the economy leading up to the Panic of 1837.^[24] In May 1836, he rejoined his family, now living in Hempstead, Long Island.^[25] Whitman taught intermittently at various schools until the spring of 1838, though he was not satisfied as a teacher.^[26]

After his teaching attempts, Whitman went back to Huntington, New York to found his own newspaper, the Long Islander. Whitman served as publisher, editor, pressman, and distributor and even provided home delivery. After ten months, he sold the publication to E. O. Crowell, whose first issue appeared on July 12, 1839.^[27] No copies of the Long-Islander published under Whitman survive.^[28] By the summer of 1839, he found a job as a typesetter in Jamaica, Queens with the Long Island Democrat, edited by James J. Brenton.^[27] He left shortly thereafter, and made another attempt at teaching from the winter of 1840 to the spring of 1841.^[29] One story, possibly apocryphal, tells of Whitman being chased away from a teaching job in Southold, New York in 1840. After a local preacher called him a "Sodomite", Whitman was allegedly tarred and feathered. Biographer Justin Kaplan notes that the story is likely untrue because Whitman regularly vacationed in the town thereafter.^[30] Biographer Jerome Loving calls the incident a "myth".^[31] During this time, Whitman published a series of ten editorials called "Sun-Down Papers—From the Desk of a Schoolmaster" in three newspapers between the winter of 1840 and July 1841. In these essays, he adopted a constructed persona, a technique he would employ throughout his career.^[32]

Whitman moved to New York City in May, initially working a low-level job at the New World, working under Park Benjamin, Sr. and Rufus Wilmot Griswold.^[33] He continued working for short periods of time for various newspapers; in 1842 he was editor of the Aurora and from 1846 to 1848 he was editor of the Brooklyn Eagle.^[34] He also contributed freelance fiction and poetry throughout the 1840s.^[35] Whitman lost his position at the Brooklyn Eagle in 1848 after siding with the free-soil "Barnburner" wing of the Democratic party against the newspaper's owner, Isaac Van Anden, who belonged to the conservative, or "Hunker", wing of the party.^[36] Whitman was a delegate to the 1848 founding convention of the Free Soil Party.

[edit] Leaves of Grass

Whitman claimed that after years of competing for "the usual rewards", he determined to become a poet.^[37] He first experimented with a variety of popular literary genres which appealed to the cultural tastes of the period.^[38] As early as 1850, he began writing what would become Leaves of Grass,^[39] a collection of poetry which he would continue editing and revising until his death.^[40] Whitman intended to write a distinctly American epic^[41] and used free verse with a cadence based on the Bible.^[42] At the end of June 1855, Whitman surprised his brothers with the already-printed first edition of Leaves of Grass. George "didn't think it worth reading".^[43]

Walt Whitman, age 37, frontispiece to Leaves of Grass, Fulton St., Brooklyn, N.Y., steel engraving by Samuel Hollyer from a lost daguerreotype by Gabriel Harrison.

Whitman paid for the publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass himself^[43] and had it printed at a local print shop during their breaks from commercial jobs.^[44] A total of 795 copies were printed.^[45] No name is given as author; instead, facing the title page was an engraved portrait done by Samuel Hollyer,^[46] but 500 lines into the body of the text he calls himself "Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, disorderly, fleshly, and sensual, no sentimentalist, no stander above men or women or apart from them, no more modest than immodest".^[47] The inaugural volume of poetry was preceded by a prose preface of 827 lines. The succeeding untitled twelve poems totaled 2315 lines—1336 lines belonging to the first untitled poem, later called "Song of Myself". The book received its strongest praise from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote a flattering five page letter to Whitman and spoke highly of the book to friends.^[48] The first edition of Leaves of Grass was widely distributed and stirred up significant interest,^[49] in part due to Emerson's approval,^[50] but was occasionally criticized for the seemingly "obscene" nature of the poetry.^[51] Geologist John Peter Lesley wrote to Emerson, calling the book "trashy, profane & obscene" and the author "a pretentious ass".^[52] On July 11, 1855, a few days after Leaves of Grass was published, Whitman's father died at the age of 65.^[53]

In the months following the first edition of Leaves of Grass, critical responses began focusing more on the potentially offensive sexual themes. Though the second edition was already printed and bound, the publisher almost did not release it.^[54] In the end, the edition went to retail, with 20 additional poems,^[55] in August 1856.^[56] Leaves of Grass was revised and re-released in 1860^[57] again in 1867, and several more times throughout the remainder of Whitman's life. Several well-known writers admired the work enough to visit Whitman, including Bronson Alcott and Henry David Thoreau.^[58]

During the first publications of Leaves of Grass, Whitman had financial difficulties and was forced to work as a journalist again, specifically with Brooklyn's Daily Times starting in May 1857.^[59] As an editor, he oversaw the paper's contents, contributed book reviews, and wrote editorials.^[60] He left the job in 1859, though it is unclear if he was fired or chose to leave.^[61] Whitman, who typically kept detailed notebooks and journals, left very little information about himself in the late 1850s.^[62]

Civil War years[link]

Walt Whitman as photographed by Mathew Brady

Walt Whitman's handwritten manuscript for "Broadway, 1861".

As the American Civil War was beginning, Whitman published his poem "Beat! Beat! Drums!" as a patriotic rally call for the North.^[63] Whitman's brother George had joined the Union army and began sending Whitman several vividly detailed letters of the battle front.^[64] On December 16, 1862, a listing of fallen and wounded soldiers in the New York Tribune included "First Lieutenant G. W. Whitmore", which Whitman worried was a reference to his brother George.^[65] He made his way south immediately to find him, though his wallet was stolen on the way.^[66] "Walking all day and night, unable to ride, trying to get information, trying to get access to big people", Whitman later wrote,^[67] he eventually found George alive, with only a superficial wound on his cheek.^[65] Whitman, profoundly affected by seeing the wounded soldiers and the heaps of their amputated limbs, left for Washington on December 28, 1862 with the intention of never returning to New York.^[66]

In Washington, D.C., Whitman's friend Charley Eldridge helped him obtain part-time work in the army paymaster's office, leaving time for Whitman to volunteer as a nurse in the army hospitals.^[68] He would write of this experience in "The Great Army of the Sick", published in a New York newspaper in 1863^[69] and, 12 years later, in a book called Memoranda During the War.^[70] He then contacted Emerson, this time to ask for help in obtaining a government post.^[66] Another friend, John Trowbridge, passed on a letter of recommendation from Emerson to Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, hoping he would grant Whitman a position in that department. Chase, however, did not want to hire the author of such a disreputable book as Leaves of Grass.^[71]

The Whitman family had a difficult end to 1864. On September 30, 1864, Whitman's brother George was captured by Confederates in Virginia,^[72] and another brother, Andrew Jackson, died of tuberculosis compounded by alcoholism on December 3.^[73] That month, Whitman committed his brother Jesse to the Kings County Lunatic Asylum.^[74] Whitman's spirits were raised, however, when he finally got a better-paying government post as a low-grade clerk in the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior, thanks to his friend William Douglas O'Connor. O'Connor, a poet, daguerreotypist and an editor at the Saturday Evening Post, had written to William Tod Otto, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, on Whitman's behalf.^[75] Whitman began the new appointment on January 24, 1865, with a yearly salary of $1,200.^[76] A month later, on February 24, 1865, George was released from capture and granted a furlough because of his poor health.^[75] By May 1, Whitman received a promotion to a slightly higher clerkship^[76] and published Drum-Taps.^[77]

Effective June 30, 1865, however, Whitman was fired from his job.^[77] His dismissal came from the new Secretary of the Interior, former Iowa Senator James Harlan.^[76] Though Harlan dismissed several clerks who "were seldom at their respective desks", he may have fired Whitman on moral grounds after finding an 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass.^[78] O'Connor protested until J. Hubley Ashton had Whitman transferred to the Attorney General's office on July 1.^[79] O'Connor, though, was still upset and vindicated Whitman by publishing a biased and exaggerated biographical study, The Good Gray Poet, in January 1866. The fifty-cent pamphlet defended Whitman as a wholesome patriot, established the poet's nickname and increased his popularity.^[80] Also aiding in his popularity was the publication of "O Captain! My Captain!", a relatively conventional poem on the death of Abraham Lincoln, the only poem to appear in anthologies during Whitman's lifetime.^[81]

Part of Whitman's role at the Attorney General's office was interviewing former Confederate soldiers for Presidential pardons. "There are real characters among them", he later wrote, "and you know I have a fancy for anything out of the ordinary."^[82] In August 1866, he took a month off in order to prepare a new edition of Leaves of Grass which would not be published until 1867 after difficulty in finding a publisher.^[83] He hoped it would be its last edition.^[84] In February 1868 Poems of Walt Whitman was published in England thanks to the influence of William Michael Rossetti,^[85] with minor changes that Whitman reluctantly approved.^[86] The edition became popular in England, especially with endorsements from the highly respected writer Anne Gilchrist.^[87] Another edition of Leaves of Grass was issued in 1871, the same year it was mistakenly reported that its author died in a railroad accident.^[88] As Whitman's international fame increased, he remained at the attorney general's office until January 1872.^[89] He spent much of 1872 caring for his mother who was now nearly eighty and struggling with arthritis.^[90] He also traveled and was invited to Dartmouth College to give the commencement address on June 26, 1872.^[91]

Health decline and death[link]

Walt Whitman spent his last years at his home in Camden, New Jersey. Today, it is open to the public as the Walt Whitman House.

After suffering a paralytic stroke in early 1873, Whitman was induced to move from Washington to the home of his brother - George Washington Whitman, an Engineer — at 431 Stevens Street in Camden, New Jersey. His mother, having fallen ill, was also there and died that same year in May. Both events were difficult for Whitman and left him depressed and he would remain at his brothers home until buying his own in 1884.^[92] However, before purchasing his own home, he spent the greatest period of his residence in Camden at his brother's home in Stevens Street. While in residence he was very productive publishing three version of Leaves of Grass among other works. He was also last fully physically active in this house, receiving both Oscar Wilde and Thomas Eakins. His other brother, Edward, an "invalid" since birth, also lived in the house.

When his brother and sister-in-law were forced to move for business reasons, he bought his own house at 328 Mickle Street (now 330 Mickle Street).^[93] First taken care of by tenants, he was completely bed ridden for most of his time in Mickle Street. During this time, he began socializing with Mary Oakes Davis – the widow of a sea captain. She was a neighbor to him boarding with a family in Bridge Avenue just a few blocks from Mickle Street.^[94] She moved in with Whitman on February 24, 1885, to serve as his housekeeper in exchange for free rent. She brought with her a cat, a dog, two turtledoves, a canary, and other assorted animals.^[95] During this time, Whitman produced further editions of Leaves of Grass in 1876, 1881, and 1889.

As the end of 1891 approached, he prepared a final edition of Leaves of Grass, an edition which has been nicknamed the "Deathbed Edition". He wrote, "L. of G. at last complete—after 33 y'rs of hackling at it, all times & moods of my life, fair weather & foul, all parts of the land, and peace & war, young & old".^[96] Preparing for death, Whitman commissioned a granite mausoleum shaped like a house for $4,000^[97] and visited it often during construction.^[98] In the last week of his life, he was too weak to lift a knife or fork and wrote: "I suffer all the time: I have no relief, no escape: it is monotony — monotony — monotony — in pain."^[99]

	"America" An 1890 recording thought to be Walt Whitman reading the opening four lines of his poem "America".
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Whitman died on March 26, 1892.^[100] An autopsy revealed his lungs had diminished to one-eighth their normal breathing capacity, a result of bronchial pneumonia,^[97] and that an egg-sized abscess on his chest had eroded one of his ribs. The cause of death was officially listed as "pleurisy of the left side, consumption of the right lung, general miliary tuberculosis and parenchymatous nephritis."^[101] A public viewing of his body was held at his Camden home; over one thousand people visited in three hours^[2] and Whitman's oak coffin was barely visible because of all the flowers and wreaths left for him.^[101] Four days after his death, he was buried in his tomb at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden .^[2] Another public ceremony was held at the cemetery, with friends giving speeches, live music, and refreshments.^[3] Whitman's friend, the orator Robert Ingersoll, delivered the eulogy.^[102] Later, the remains of Whitman's parents and two of his brothers and their families were moved to the mausoleum.^[103]

Writing[link]

Portrait of Whitman by Thomas Eakins, 1887-88

Whitman's work breaks the boundaries of poetic form and is generally prose-like.^[1] He also used unusual images and symbols in his poetry, including rotting leaves, tufts of straw, and debris.^[104] He also openly wrote about death and sexuality, including prostitution.^[84] He is often labeled as the father of free verse, though he did not invent it.^[1]

Poetic theory[link]

Whitman wrote in the preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, "The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it." He believed there was a vital, symbiotic relationship between the poet and society.^[105] This connection was emphasized especially in "Song of Myself" by using an all-powerful first-person narration.^[106] As an American epic, it deviated from the historic use of an elevated hero and instead assumed the identity of the common people.^[107] Leaves of Grass also responded to the impact that recent urbanization in the United States had on the masses.^[108]

Lifestyle and beliefs[link]

Alcohol[link]

Whitman was a vocal proponent of temperance and in his youth rarely drank alcohol. He once claimed he did not taste "strong liquor" until he was thirty^[109] and occasionally argued for prohibition.^[110] One of his earliest long fiction works, the novel Franklin Evans; or, The Inebriate, first published November 23, 1842, is a temperance novel.^[111] Whitman wrote the novel at the height of popularity of the Washingtonian movement though the movement itself was plagued with contradictions, as was Franklin Evans.^[112] Years later Whitman claimed he was embarrassed by the book^[113] and called it a "damned rot".^[114] He dismissed it by saying he wrote the novel in three days solely for money while he was under the influence of alcohol himself.^[115] Even so, he wrote other pieces recommending temperance, including The Madman and a short story "Reuben's Last Wish".^[116] Later in life he was more liberal with alcohol, enjoying local wines and champagne.^[117]

Religion[link]

Whitman was deeply influenced by deism. He denied any one faith was more important than another, and embraced all religions equally.^[118] In "Song of Myself", he gave an inventory of major religions and indicated he respected and accepted all of them – a sentiment he further emphasized in his poem "With Antecedents", affirming: "I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god, / I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without exception".^[118] In 1874, he was invited to write a poem about the Spiritualism movement, to which he responded, "It seems to me nearly altogether a poor, cheap, crude humbug."^[119] Whitman was a religious skeptic: though he accepted all churches, he believed in none.^[118] God, to Whitman, was both immanent and transcendent and the human soul was immortal and in a state of progressive development.^[120]

Sexuality[link]

Whitman and Peter Doyle, one of the men with whom Whitman was believed to have had an intimate relationship

Whitman's sexuality is generally assumed to be homosexual or bisexual based on his poetry, though that has been at times disputed.^[4] His poetry depicts love and sexuality in a more earthy, individualistic way common in American culture before the medicalization of sexuality in the late 19th century.^[121] Though Leaves of Grass was often labeled pornographic or obscene, only one critic remarked on its author's presumed sexual activity: in a November 1855 review, Rufus Wilmot Griswold suggested Whitman was guilty of "that horrible sin not to be mentioned among Christians".^[122] Whitman had intense friendships with many men and boys throughout his life. Some biographers have claimed that he may not have actually engaged in sexual relationships with males,^[5] while others cite letters, journal entries and other sources which they claim as proof of the sexual nature of some of his relationships.^[123]

Peter Doyle may be the most likely candidate for the love of Whitman's life, according to biographer David S. Reynolds.^[124] Doyle was a bus conductor whom Whitman met around 1866 and the two were inseparable for several years. Interviewed in 1895, Doyle said: "We were familiar at once — I put my hand on his knee — we understood. He did not get out at the end of the trip — in fact went all the way back with me."^[125] In his notebooks, Whitman disguised Doyle's initials using the code "16.4".^[126] A more direct second-hand account comes from Oscar Wilde. Wilde met Whitman in America in 1882 and wrote to the homosexual rights activist George Cecil Ives that there was "no doubt" about the great American poet's sexual orientation — "I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips," he boasted.^[127] The only explicit description of Whitman's sexual activities is second hand. In 1924 Edward Carpenter, then an old man, described an erotic encounter he had had in his youth with Whitman to Gavin Arthur, who recorded it in detail in his journal.^[128][129] Late in his life, when Whitman was asked outright if his series of "Calamus" poems were homosexual, he chose not to respond.^[130]

Walt Whitman and Bill Duckett

Another possible lover was Bill Duckett. As a young teenage boy he lived in on the same street in Camden and moved in with Whitman, living with him a number of years and serving him in various roles. Duckett was fifteen when Whitman bought his house at 328 Mickle Street. Since, at least 1880, Duckett and his grandmother, Lydia Watson, were boarders subletting space from another family at 334 Mickle Street. Due to this close proximity it is obvious that Duckett and Whitman met as neighbors. Their relationship was close, with the youth sharing Whitman's money when he had it. Whitman described their friendship as "thick." Though some biographers describe him as a boarder, others identify him as a lover.^[131] Their photograph [pictured] is described as "modeled on the conventions of a marriage portrait," part of a series of portraits of the poet with his young male friends, and encrypting male-male desire.^[132] Yet another intense relationship with a young man was the one with Harry Stafford, with whose family he stayed when at Timber Creek, and whom he first met when the young man was 18, in 1876. Whitman gave young Stafford a ring, which was returned and given back over the course of a stormy relationship lasting a number of years. Of that ring Stafford wrote to Whitman, "You know when you put it on there was but one thing to part it from me, and that was death."^[133]

There is also some evidence that Whitman may have had sexual relationships with women. He had a romantic friendship with a New York actress named Ellen Grey in the spring of 1862, but it is not known if it was also sexual. He still had a photo of her decades later when he moved to Camden and referred to her as "an old sweetheart of mine".^[134] In a letter dated August 21, 1890 he claimed, "I have had six children — two are dead". This claim has never been corroborated.^[135] Toward the end of his life, he often told stories of previous girlfriends and sweethearts and denied an allegation from the New York Herald that he had "never had a love affair".^[136] As Whitman biographer Jerome Loving wrote, "the discussion of Whitman's sexual orientation will probably continue in spite of whatever evidence emerges."^[5]

Shakespeare authorship[link]

Whitman was an adherent of the Shakespeare authorship question, refusing to believe in the historic attribution of the works to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. Whitman comments in his November Boughs (1888) regarding Shakespeare's historical plays:

Conceiv'd out of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism—personifying in unparalleled ways the medieval aristocracy, its towering spirit of ruthless and gigantic caste, with its own peculiar air and arrogance (no mere imitation)—only one of the "wolfish earls" so plenteous in the plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower, might seem to be the true author of those amazing works—works in some respects greater than anything else in recorded literature.^[137]

Slavery[link]

Whitman opposed the extension of slavery in the United States and supported the Wilmot Proviso.^[138] At first he was opposed to abolitionism, believing the movement did more harm than good. In 1846, he wrote that the abolitionists had, in fact, slowed the advancement of their cause by their "ultraism and officiousness".^[139] His main concern was that their methods disrupted the democratic process, as did the refusal of the Southern states to put the interests of the nation as a whole above their own.^[138] In 1856, in his unpublished The Eighteenth Presidency, addressing the men of the South, he wrote "you are either to abolish slavery or it will abolish you". Whitman also subscribed to the widespread opinion that even free African-Americans should not vote^[140] and was concerned at the increasing number of African-Americans in the legislature.^[141]

Legacy and influence[link]

Whitman was honored on a 'Famous Americans Series' Postal issue, in 1940.

Walt Whitman has been claimed as America's first "poet of democracy", a title meant to reflect his ability to write in a singularly American character. A British friend of Walt Whitman, Mary Smith Whitall Costelloe, wrote: "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him."^[142] Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman "America's poet... He is America."^[143] Andrew Carnegie called him "the great poet of America so far".^[144] Whitman considered himself a messiah-like figure in poetry.^[145] Others agreed: one of his admirers, William Sloane Kennedy, speculated that "people will be celebrating the birth of Walt Whitman as they are now the birth of Christ".^[146]

The literary critic, Harold Bloom wrote, as the introduction for the 150th anniversary of Leaves of Grass:

If you are American, then Walt Whitman is your imaginative father and mother, even if, like myself, you have never composed a line of verse. You can nominate a fair number of literary works as candidates for the secular Scripture of the United States. They might include Melville's Moby-Dick, Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Emerson's two series of Essays and The Conduct of Life. None of those, not even Emerson's, are as central as the first edition of Leaves of Grass.^[147]

Whitman's vagabond lifestyle was adopted by the Beat movement and its leaders such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in the 1950s and 1960s as well as anti-war poets like Adrienne Rich and Gary Snyder.^[148] Lawrence Ferlinghetti numbered himself among Whitman's "wild children", and the title of his 1961 collection Starting from San Francisco is a deliberate reference to Whitman's Starting from Paumanok.^[149] Whitman also influenced Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, and was the model for the character of Dracula. Stoker said in his notes that Dracula represented the quintessential male which, to Stoker, was Whitman, with whom he corresponded until Whitman's death.^[150] Other admirers included the Eagle Street College, an informal group established in 1885 at the home of James William Wallace in Eagle Street, Bolton, to read and discuss the poetry of Whitman. The group subsequently became known as the Bolton Whitman Fellowship or Whitmanites. Its members held an annual 'Whitman Day' celebration around the poet's birthday.^[151]

Whitman's poetry has been set to music by a large number of composers; indeed it has been suggested his poetry has been set to music more than any other American poet except for Emily Dickinson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.^[152] Those who have set his poems to music have included Kurt Weill, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frederick Delius, Paul Hindemith, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein, Ned Rorem, Ronald Corp, George Crumb, Roger Sessions and John Adams.

Whitman is a 2009 inductee of the New Jersey Hall of Fame.^[153] The Walt Whitman Bridge crosses the Delaware River near his home in Camden.

Works[link]

• Franklin Evans (1842)
• Leaves of Grass (1855)
• Drum-Taps (1865)
• Memoranda During the War
• Specimen Days
• Democratic Vistas (1871)

See also[link]

Poetry portal

• American philosophy
• Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
• Walt Whitman Bridge, connecting Philadelphia to Gloucester City, New Jersey, is named for Walt Whitman.
• Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland
• Walt Whitman High School in Huntington, New York
• Walt Whitman Shops in Huntington Station, New York

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Callow, Philip. From Noon to Starry Night: A Life of Walt Whitman. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1992. ISBN 0-929587-95-2
• Kaplan, Justin. Walt Whitman: A Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979. ISBN 0-671-22542-1
• Loving, Jerome. Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself. University of California Press, 1999. ISBN 0-520-22687-9
• Miller, James E., Jr. Walt Whitman. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc. 1962
• Reynolds, David S. Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. ISBN 0-679-76709-6
• Stacy, Jason. Walt Whitman's Multitudes: Labor Reform and Persona in Whitman's Journalism and the First Leaves of Grass, 1840-1855. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2008. ISBN 978-1-4331-0383-4

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Walt Whitman

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Walt Whitman

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Walt Whitman

• Walt Whitman: Online Resources at the Library of Congress
• The Walt Whitman Archive includes all editions of "Leaves of Grass" in page-images and transcription, as well as manuscripts, criticism, and biography
• Walt Whitman Page by Camden County, New Jersey Historical Society
• Works by or about Walt Whitman in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Walt Whitman household in NJ in 1880 census
• Walt Whitman letters from the Civil War - taken from the 'Wound Dresser'
• Poems by Walt Whitman An extensive collection of Whitman's poetry
• Poets.org – Biography, related essays, poems, and reading guides from the Academy of American Poets
• MS Lowell 15. Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892. Passage to India : autograph manuscript; Washington, 1870. 21s. (21p.) Houghton Library, Harvard University.
• New York Times, January 22, 1882 WHITMAN, POET AND SEER; A REVIEW OF HIS LITERARY SCHEME, WORK, AND METHOD This is made available online for free in the pre-1922 NYT archives.
• Booknotes interview with David S. Reynolds on Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography, April 28, 1996.

Sites

• Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site
• Walt Whitman Camden Home Historic Site
• Walt Whitman's grave site at Find A Grave.com