美国文学-惠特曼.ppt

Walt Whitman Wang Ruixian 2014.12.13 Whitman ? Position A poet, an essayist , A journalist, a humanist A giant of American letters The father of free verse One of the great innovators in American literature Whitman ? Position A part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism Whitman ? Life Experience Born on May 31, 1819, the second son of a house-builder. Brought up in a working-class background on Long Island, New York. Had five years of schooling and a good deal of loafing and reading. Tried at a various of jobs and picked up a first-hand knowledge of life and people in the new world. Worked as an office boy, a printers apprentice, schoolmaster, printer, editor (of eight successive newspapers ), and journalist. Whitman ? Life Experience 1848, traveled to New Orleans and saw much of the Mississippi heartlands. 1855, the first edition of Leaves of Grass came out (contained 12 poems). During the Civil War, worked as a volunteer nurse, a wound-dresser in military hospitals. Whitman ? Life Experience Released a second edition of the book in 1856, containing thirty-three poems, a letter from Emerson praising the first edition, and a long open letter by Whitman in response. Continued to revise and expand his Leaves of Grass, and it went through 9 editions altogether. 1873, suffered a paralytic stroke. died on March 26, 1892. Whitman ? Life Experience After his death on March 26, 1892, Whitman was buried in a tomb he designed and had built on a lot in Harleigh Cemetery. Whitman ? Works nine editions，from 95 pages,12 poems to 400 pages,401 poems the first American genuine epic poems a collection of poems written mainly in free verse is noble for its frank delight in and praise of the senses most of the poems are about man and nature,praise the nature and the individaul humans role therein Whitman ? Works Grass means—— the image of the common people a symbol of rising America an enbodiment of his ideals about democracy