Whitman and Dickinson

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how nineteenth century American poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson project individual identities that achieve their power from within, thus placing a premium on the individual self. The paper shows how both poets also challenged the cultural assumptions on gender in the late nineteenth century. The paper analyzes and compares several works by both poets.

From the Paper:

"Like Whitman, the individual identity projected in this poem of Dickinson's achieves its power from within, from the solitary life, not from society. In many of Dickinson poem's she puts a premium on the individual self as something that is above being touched, it is, as she says in poem# 1351, "that indestructible estate"(584). In many of her poems the individual identity of the speaker achieves its power from within. For example, poem #540, "I took my power in my Hand and went against the World"(263-264). The significance of this similarity between Whitman and Dickinson is that it demonstrates how their poetry is very much in dialogue with the culture they wrote in, more specifically the intellectual milieu of late 19th Century New England. The fact that they share similar ideas about the individual self and project in their poetry an identity defined in opposition to society, is surely no coincidence."

More papers on Whitman and Dickinson:

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• Comparison Essay # 1463 : "Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson"

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