WaltWhitman.ppt

1、Walt Whitman,1819-1892,In General,a giant of American letters Leaves of Grass: a monumental work for its uniquely poetic embodiment of American democratic ideals. the poet of the common people the prophet and singer of democracy.,life,born into a working-class family Son of a carpenter an office boy

2、. Worked in the printing office of a newspaper At 17, had his poems printed on a paper,became a professional writer when he took up journalism. turned to the manual work of carpentry around 1851 or 1852, as an experiment to familiarize himself with the reality and essence of the life of the nation.,

3、Whitmans democratic ideals,In his famous poetry, openness, freedom, and above all, individualism are all that concerned him. Whitman brings the hard-working farmers and laborers into American literature, attack the slavery system and racial discrimination. he also extols nature, democracy, labor and

4、 creation ,and sings of mans dignity and equality, and of the brightest future of mankind Whitman believed that poetry could play a vital part in the process of creating a new nation. It could enable Americans to celebrate their release from the Old World and the colonial rule. And it could also hel

5、p them understand their new status and to define themselves in the new world of possibilities.,themes in Whitmans poetry,optimistic expectation enthusiasm about new things and new epoch. The abundance of themes in his poetry voices freshness. (1) He shows concern for the whole hard-working people an

6、d the burgeoning life of cities. (2) He advocates the realization of the individual value. Most of the poems in Leaves of Grass sing of the en-masse and the self as well.,themes in Whitmans poetry,(3) Pursuit of love and happiness Sexual love The individual person and his desires. (4) Some of Whitma

7、ns poems are politically committed: “Cavalry Crossing a Ford.” 涉水的骑兵 poems to air his sorrow over the death of Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd” 当紫丁香上次在庭院开放的时候,Leaves of Grass,Walt Whitman is a poet with a strong sense of mission, having devoted all his life to the creation of the s

8、ingle poem, Leaves of Grass. (1) the title: where there is earth, where there is water, there is grass. Grass, is an image of the poet himself, a symbol of the then rising American nation and an embodiment of his ideals about democracy and freedom.,theme,openness, freedom, individualism (the belief

9、that the rights and freedom of individual people are most important) are all that concerned him. attacks the slavery system and racial discrimination. extols nature, democracy, labor and creation , sings of mans dignity and equality, and of the brightestfutureof mankind . Most of the poems sing of t

10、he en-masse and the self as well.,the poets essential purpose,to express some new poetical feelings to initiate a poetic tradition in which difference should be recognized. essential purpose was to identify his ego with the world, and more specifically with the democratic en-masse of America, which

11、is established in the opening lines of Song of Myself.,poetic style and language,(1) Whitmans poetic style is marked, first of all, by the use of the poetic I. Whitman becomes all those people in his poems and yet still remains Walt Whitman, hence a discovery of the self in the other with such an id

12、entification. In such a manner, Whitman invites his readers to participate in the process of sympathetic identification.,poetic style and language,(2) Whitman is also radically innovative in terms of the form of his poetry. He adopted free verse, that is, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme

13、 scheme. A looser and more open-ended syntactical structure is frequently favored. Lines and sentences of different lengths are left lying side by side just as things are, undisturbed and separate. There are few compound sentences to draw objects and experiences into a system of hierarchy.,poetic st

14、yle and language,Whitman was the first American to use free verse extensively. By means of free verse, Whitman turned the poem into an open field, an area of vital possibility where the reader can allow his own imagination to play.,poetic style and language,(3) Whitman is conversational and casual,

15、in the fluid, expansive, and unstructured style of talking. However, there is a strong sense of the poems being rhythmical. The reader can feel the rhythm of Whitmans thought and cadences of his feeling. Parallelism and phonetic recurrence at the beginning of the lines also contribute to the musical

16、ity of his poems.,(4) Whitmans language relatively simple and even rather crude. (a) Most of the pictures he painted with words are honest, undistorted images of different aspects of America of the day. They are unconventional in the way they break down the social division based on religion, gender,

17、 class, and race. One of the most often-used methods in Whitmans poems is to make colors and images fleet past the minds eye of the reader.,(b) strong tendency to use oral English. (c) Whitmans vocabulary is amazing: powerful, colorful, as well as rarely-used words, words of foreign origin and sometimes even wrong words. Walt Whitman has proved a great figure in the literary history of the United States