Walt Whitman and the American Reader [Paperback]

A far-ranging study of Whitman as a model of the nineteenth-century American writer.In Walt Whitman and the American Reader, Ezra Greenspan casts Whitman as the central actor on the stage of nineteenth-century American literary culture - a culture redefining its democratic identity.In Walt Whitman and the American Reader, Ezra Greenspan casts Whitman as the central actor on the stage of nineteenth-century American literary culture - a culture redefining its democratic identity.In Walt Whitman and the American Reader, Greenspan casts Whitman as the central actor on the stage of nineteenth-century American literary culture--a culture redefining its democratic identity. Against the context of the major changes revolutionizing the professions of printer, publisher, bookseller, and author, he examines the connection between the bookmaking culture of mid-century and Leaves of Grass, and between the conditions for authorship and Whitman's career. The result is a far-ranging study of Whitman as a model of the nineteenth-century American writer writing for--and sometimes reacting against--the newly enfranchised, expanded reading public of his time.Preface; Part I. Whitman and the Conditions for Authorship in Nineteenth-century America: 1. Homage to the tenth muse; 2. The evolution of American literary culture, 182050; 3. Going forth into literary America; 4. 'I am a writer, for the press and otherwise'; Part II. Whitman, Leaves of Grass and the Reader: 5. Intentions and ambitions; 6. Whitman and the reader, 1855; 7. The public response; 8. Whitman and the reader, 1856; 9. 'Publish yourself of your own personality'; 10. 1860: 'year of meteors'; 11. Whitman and his readers through the century; Notes; Index. Greenspan retraces Whitman's early life along tightly professional lines, stressing his activities as printer, journalist, editor, and popular author. He then provides illuminating commentary on the first three editions of Leaves of Grass in terms of Whitman's shifting al£o