Walt Whitman, O Captain! My Captain!

Jennifer McQuillan (Independent Scholar - North America)

Ed. by Stephen E. Meats, Pittsburg State University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.2: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth Century, 1783-1900.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1865

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poem

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

When Walt Whitman published

Leaves of Grass

in 1855, he believed that in his poetry “[…] he shared three greatnesses – Love, Democracy, and Religion” (Bradley and Blodgett xxiv). His sweeping masterpiece sought to celebrate not only the individual human being, but also the individuality of America as a whole – a democracy of diverse citizens all contributing to the creation of a country unlike any other in the world. How crushing, then, for Whitman to bear witness to his beloved nation turning against itself, its blades of grass now dripping with the blood of both Union and Confederate soldiers. Love, democracy, and religion now hung in the balance. Though Whitman believed the war would hasten the end to the “social ills” he had chronicled in his poetry, “The suffering he…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1807 words

Citation: McQuillan, Jennifer . "O Captain! My Captain!". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 August 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35583, accessed 25 November 2024.]

Walt Whitman, O Captain! My Captain!

Dates

Places

Genres and Modes

Resources

Save this article

Leave Feedback