Walt Whitman and the culture of American celebrity / David Haven Blake.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Blake, David Haven.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892.

Whitman, Walt.

Poets, American--19th century--Biography.

Poets, American.

Publicity.

Fame--Economic aspects.

Fame.

Popular culture--United States--History--19th century.

Popular culture.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 online resource (xv, 251 p.) ) ill.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

What is the relationship between poetry and fame? What happens to a reader's experience when a poem invokes its author's popularity? Is there a meaningful connection between poetry and advertising, between the rhetoric of lyric and the rhetoric of hype? One of the first full-scale treatments of celebrity in nineteenth-century America, this book examines Walt Whitman's lifelong interest in fame and publicity. Making use of notebooks, photographs, and archival sources, David Haven Blake provides a groundbreaking history of the rise of celebrity culture in the United States. He sees Leaves of Grass alongside the birth of commercial advertising and the nation's growing obsession with the lives of the famous and the renowned. As authors, lecturers, politicians, entertainers, and clergymen vied for popularity, Whitman developed a form of poetry that routinely promoted and, indeed, celebrated itself. Walt Whitman and the Culture of American Celebrity proposes a fundamentally new way of thinking about a seminal American poet and a major national icon.

Contents:

Frontispiece

Celebrity

Personality

Publicity

Intimacies

Campaigns.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [217]-240) and index.

ISBN:

9786611734916

9781281734914

1281734918

9780300134810

0300134819

OCLC:

1013935631