1、Walt Whitman(1819-1892)I celebrate myself,and sing myself,I celebrate myself,and sing myself,And what I assume you shall assume,And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to yougood belongs to you Excerpt from Excerpt from Song
2、 Song of Myselfof MyselfLife Born:31 May 1819 Birthplace:Long Island,New York.Died:26 March 1892 Born in a working-class family,son of a carpenter At four,family moved to Brooklyn,New York Attended public school Apprenticed to a printer Returned to Long Island in 1835 and taught in country schools E
3、dited a newspaper,the Long-Islander,in Huntington Back to New York City to work as a printer and journalist Experienced various jobs Began writing a new kind of poetry(free verse)Whitmans democratic ideals&individualismAmericas first“poet of democracy”Whitmans democratic ideas govern his poetry-writ
4、ing.In his famous poetry,openness,freedom,and above all,individualism(the belief that the rights and freedom of individual people are most important)are all that concerned him.Whitman brings the hard-working farmers and laborers into American literature,attack the slavery system and racial discrimin
5、ation.The themes in Whitmans poetryfilled with optimistic expectation and enthusiasm about new things and new epoch.1.The whole hard-working people The burgeoning life of cities.The fast growth of industry and wealth in cities2.Individual value3.Pursuit of love and happiness 4.Sexual love5.The indiv
6、idual person and his desires must be respected.Americas first“poet of democracy”Walt Whitman was an American poet,essayist,journalist,and humanist.Proclaimed the greatest of all American poets by many foreign observers a mere four years after his death.His Leaves of Grass has always been considered
7、a monumental work.It commands great attention because of its uniquely poetic embodiment of American democratic ideals.He is the poet of the common people and the prophet and singer of democracy.Influence Influences the 20th century world literature:His works is part of western culture/many poets in
8、France,Italy,England,and Latin America are in his debt.His poetry also influences modern American poets such as Pound,T.S.Eliot,Hart Crane,Carl Sandburg.The first person narrator:“I”the subject in the poem,“you”the reader Invites us to participate in the process of sympathetic identification.Style:f
9、ree verse Important Features in Whitmans Poems1.No fixed rhyme and scheme2.A looser and open-ended syntactical structure 3.The habit of using snapshots（快照）4.Use of conversational image 5.Strong tendency to use oral English6.Vocabulary-powerful,colorful,rarely-used words of foreign origin,wrong words
10、7.Sentences-different lengths,disturbed,separateRhyme1.a rhythm of thought 2.cadences of his feeling3.Parallelism To repeat the idea in the lines with minor changes in wording(the line is the rhythmical unit)4.Phonetic recurrence Repetition of the first words and phrasesworks Leaves of Grass Songs o
11、f Myself There was a Child Went forth I hear America sining Drum Taps Leaves of Grass Whitmans originality first in his use of the poetic form free verse(i.e.poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme)The first version of his masterpiece,Leaves of Grass,appeared in 1855.Emerson praised Whit
12、mans poetry as“the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet to contribute.”Leaves of GrassWalt Whitman has devoted all his life to the creation of the“single”poem,Leaves of Grass.The work has nine editions.In this giant work,openness,freedom,and individualism are all that conc
13、erned him.His purpose is to express some new poetical feelings and to initiate a poetic tradition in which difference should be recognized.He wanted to behave as a supreme individualist.Leaves of GrassMost of the poems in Leaves of Grass sing of the “en-masse”and the self as well.Whitman also gives
14、emphasis to the physical dimension of the self and openly celebrates sexuality.Pursuit of love and happiness is approved of repeatedly affectionately in his lines.If two persons are really in love,“what is to us what the rest do or think?”The individual person and his desires must be respected.Obvio
15、usly,Whitmans sexual themes are beyond the physical.Song of Myself Song of Myself was originally published in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass in which it was the first of twelve poems.At the time this poem was untitled,in 1881 Whitman gave the poem its final name:Song of Myself.In Song of Myself
16、,Whitman believed that two people could be“twain yet one”,their paths could be different,and yet they could achieve a kind of transcendent contact.Song of Myself is a history of the poets movement from loafing individual to active spirit.Drum TapsIn May 1865 Walt began printing his Civil War literat
17、ure,entitled Drum-Taps.Some of Whitmans poems are political committed.Before and during the Civil War,he stood firmly on the side of the North.Drum Taps Drum Taps is the collection of his emotions and feelings during the period.In Drum Taps,as a lover of peace,Whitman express much mourning for the determination to carry on the fighting dauntlessly until the final victory.|Thank you!.
