The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War book download
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The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War by Roy Morris
Download The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War
The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War Roy Morris
Language: English
Page: 288
Format: pdf
ISBN: 0195124820, 9781423760764
Publisher:
From Publishers Weekly
Since the 1980sAwhen scholars such as Michael Moon and Robert K. Martin reinvigorated Walt Whitman scholarship by queering itAthe poet has inspired something of a literary cottage industry. Now Morris takes Whitman scholarship in a captivating new direction. In this study, the first complete account of the poet's Civil War years, Morris (Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company) shows how the War Between the States changed Whitman as a man and a poet. Indeed, in Morris's rendering, Whitman becomes a kind of metaphor for the country itself, a nearly transcendental signifier of American-style democracy and sexual freedom (though he was rather more ambivalent concerning the place of the "African" in American society). Whitman was, the author argues, depressed and adrift in New York's bohemia before the war; suffering from writer's block regarding his poetry, he occupied himself with journalistic hackwork. But when his brother was wounded at Fredericksburg, Whitman found a cause that revived his sense of purpose: he spent three years visiting tens of thousands of wounded soldiers in and around Washington, D.C.Aand by the end of the war, he had become "the good gray poet," a larger-than-life figure Morris calls "almost mystical." The war, as Whitman himself acknowledged, "saved" him. His wartime experience inspired some of his best work, including the masterpiece "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." The postwar years also engendered a deep despair, however. Fearful that the nation had forgotten its soldiers in the heady days of the Gilded Age, the poet attacked "the post-war climate of graft and malaise." However despondent, Whitman produced important writing after the dust had cleared. The Better Angel enriches our understanding of his subsequent life and work. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
YA-Morris notes in his introduction that Whitman, no stranger to the practice of using precise vocabulary, claimed he was "saved" by the Civil War. The author explains his subject's salvation by tracing the effects of crisis and suffering on one man's spirit and artistry. Since this was also the man who articulated America's voice in his groundbreaking Leaves of Grass, Whitman's evolution personified that of the country he celebrated and loved. In 1860, the poet was feeling cynical and unfocused, mired in a "New York [s]tagnation." Then, following the bloody battle of Fredericksburg in December, 1862, word reached the Whitmans that Walt's brother had been wounded. Walt immediately left Brooklyn for Virginia, beginning the journey that would define the remainder of his life. While George's injury was slight, Walt's experiences with the Union's sick and wounded both revitalized and seasoned him. For the next several years this "great mothering sort of man," bearing small gifts and treats, comradeship and compassion, became a fixture in soldiers' hospitals. Morris's skills as a researcher are evident and his writing is first rate. Teens can read Better Angel as a moving introduction to Whitman, for its information on the home front and the medical profession during the Civil War, or to gain insight into the sociological and psychological aftermath of war on individuals or nations.
Dori DeSpain, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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