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1、Walt Whitman(1819-1892)(沃尔特惠特曼)Leaves of Grass草叶集（1855）I.Life 1.Birthplace:Long Island,New York 2.Family Background:poor3.Education:only five or six years of formal schooling but well-educated through private reading4.Working Experience:1836-1841,an elementary school teacher;1842,editor of The New Y
2、ork Aurora;carpenter and other did other odd jobsII.Literary Achievements 1855:Leaves of Grass To create a truly American poem,one“proportionate to our continent,with its powerful races of men,its tremendous historic events,its great oceans,its mountains,and its illimitable prairies.”In his first ed
3、ition,he describes himself as：“An American bard at last!One of the roughs,large,proud,affectionate,eating,drinking,and breeding,his costume manly and free,his face sunburnt and bearded,his postures strong and erect.”Only Emerson gave a favorable comment on his poems,calling his work“the most extraor
4、dinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.”Leaves of Grass ran nine editions with more than 400 poems all written in free verse form,that is,poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.Free Verse 自由诗 a kind of poetry that does not conform to any regular metre:the length
5、 of its lines is irregular,as its use of thyme if any.Instead of a regular metrical pattern it uses more flexible cadences or rhythmic groupings,sometimes supported by anaphora and other devices of repetition.Now the most widely practised verse form in English,it his precedents in translations of th
6、e biblical Psalms and in some poems of Blake and Goethe,but established itself only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with Walt Whitman,the French symbolists,and the poets of modernism.Free verse should not be confused with blank verse,which does observe a regular metre in its unrhymed lines
7、.III.Leaves of Grass 1)Some Special Features1.In Whitmans poetry,the sprawling lines of he poems are often extremely long.The long lines are an indication of the use of an organic form.Whitman was not constrained by the number of beats in a line.2.The line link is visual for Whitman.The 1855 edition
8、 was published on big sheets of paper so that every line could begin and end without being indented.The reader could see how long the lines were and could compare and contrast the short lines with the long ones.Whitman wanted his poetry to be visual,to have the same openness and expansiveness that t
9、he personality of the poet had.3.Parallelism is a technique of the Biblical poetry,of repeating he idea in verse lines,but there might be minor changes in wording.The parallel lines say the same thing but use different words.Whitman created the new poetic form which in fact originates from the ancie
10、nt Hebrew tradition in the Bible.His poems are distinguished by Biblical cadences and impressive repetitions.4.His poetry is religious.This accords with Whitmans desire to express spiritual truth based on his mystical experience.5.His poetic structure is called the envelop structure.Often in Whitman
11、s poetry,the first line begins with the subject,and then more and more lines list modifiers till the verb appears in the last line of the stanza.This is like enclosing a whole list of ideas in an envelop.6.He used the catalog technique.Catalogue means listing.Typical poems by Whitman make long,long
12、lists of images,of sights,sounds,smells,taste,and touch.“I Hear America Singing”is a very good example of the catalogue technique.He listed the song that every common person in America is singing.This is very unconventional and sometimes very boring.But when one uses it nicely,it is an effective tec
13、hnique.7.His verse unit is unique.A.There is no regular pattern.Seldom did he follow a regular pattern.Whitman might have two lines,then one line,then four lines,the tree,then one,then nine.And the length of the lines is irregular.The movement from short to gradually long swelling long lines followe
14、d by a return to shorter lines makes his poetry look like the lip of a wave.B.The verse unit is usually an independent clause.C.Each verse unit is a complete statement.If Whitman had an idea that takes six lines,he gave you a six-line verse.So it is important for Whitman that the complete statement
15、is the basis of the verse.8.Whereas many poets use meter to establish the rhythm of the poem,Whitman seems to work according to thoughts.He would take one line to develop a thought.And when that thought is done,he would start a new line.So the poem does not move in terms of beats.The poem moves in t
16、erms of thoughts.9.His poems are composed like mosaics.He would write some words out on many scraps of paper,then put the scraps of paper in order.He started out with several ideas,put them on paper,shuffled the paper around to get them in the right order and then he had the poem.Thought is more imp
17、ortant to him than the regularity of form.10.Whitman often coined new words and gave old words new meanings.He said,“Sometimes I think Leaves of Grass is only a language experiment.”He used different kinds of words for his audience to see if they would work to capture the spirit of democracy.Above a
18、ll,Whitman wanted the language of his poems to be understood by the common people.Whitman put everybody in his poetry and tried to reach all American people.But his poems were criticized in his day for being rough and uncivilized.He was almost ignored by the general public,though his poetry praises
19、the low and seemingly trivial.2)Themes He celebrated new America rather than regretted it.He opposed slavery,idealized Lincoln,supported strikes,and combined the ideal of the democratic common people and that of the rugged individual.Like Emerson,Whitman saw a unity which pervaded the universe.For W
20、hitman,sensuality led to spiritual insight.He celebrated the body,enjoyed the body,because he said that through the physical people learned the spiritual.He celebrated individuality,democracy,equality,friendship,passion.IV.Comment Whitman was one of the most original and inspiring American poets,tru
21、e to his art and to his role as a poet.He devoted himself to poetry eulogizing the native American experience His Leaves of Grass is Americas first genuine epic poem.Whitman incorporated the world of science,the philosophy of democracy and the spiritual feeling of life into his poetry.He threw aside
22、 the traditional ornaments and prettiness of verse and created his own form.Both the content and form of his poems are revolutionaryWith its frequent use of colloquial language and everyday events,his verse represents a turning point in the history of American poetry poetry fashioned out of speciall
23、y American experience in a distinctly American idiom.Whitmans unique poetic creation has developed a very significant tradition in American poetry.V.Topics for Discussion1.What is your idea of poetry?State your views on Whitmans poems with neither rhyme nor a fixed rhythm.2.Why does Whitman so highl
24、y regard the“Self”?How do you interpret the first line in the 31st section?Do you agree to that?Which lines have greater appeal to you?How?3.How does“I Hear America Singing”convey Whitmans faith in the people of his country?4.Comment on Whitmans attitude toward institutions of society and the institutions he wants to establish.5.Besides individualism Whitman puts his emphasis on something else.What is it as you can find from“I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing”?