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The erotic Whitman / Vivian R. Pollak.
LIBRA PS3242.S47 P65 2000
Available from offsite location
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Pollak, Vivian R.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892--Criticism and interpretation.
- Whitman, Walt.
- Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892--Knowledge and learning--Sex.
- Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892.
- Sex.
- Sex in literature.
- Male homosexuality in literature.
- Homosexuality and literature--United States--History--19th century.
- Homosexuality and literature.
- History.
- Criticism and interpretation.
- United States.
- Physical Description:
- xxiv, 261 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Berkeley : University of California Press, [2000]
- Summary:
- Vivian Pollak skillfully explores the intimate relationships that contributed to Walt Whitman's imagination of masculinity in crisis. She maintains that in representing himself as a characteristic nineteenth-century American and in proposing to heal national ills, the poet was trying to temper his own inner conflicts as well. Integrating biography and criticism, Pollak employs a loosely chronological organization to describe the poet's multifaceted "faith in sex". Drawing on his early fiction, journalism, letters, and notebook entries, she shows how in spite of his personal ambivalence about sustained erotic intimacy, Whitman came to imagine himself as "the phallic choice of America".
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-244) and index.
- ISBN:
- 0520221893
- 0520221907
- OCLC:
- 43403469
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