Open AccessThe Transparent Eyeball of the Nation: Walt Whitman’s Imagined Nation in “Song of Myself”
Author(s) -
Mohammed Ghazi Alghamdi
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
acta poética
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 1
eISSN - 2448-735X
pISSN - 0185-3082
DOI - 10.19130/iifl.ap.2021.2.18126
Subject(s) - sovereignty , politics , reflexive pronoun , style (visual arts) , literature , poetry , subject (documents) , history , art , philosophy , law , political science , library science , computer science
This paper provides a textual analysis of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”, revealing its significance as a national poem. The paper argues that Whitman’s "Song of Myself" breaks literary and political limits, challenging the sovereignty of the nation. By examining "Song of Myself" in the six different editions of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, this paper will further analyze Whitman’s style and his speaker as representations of the limitations and sovereignty of literary tradition and the politics of his nation. By “politics,” I refer to the religious, political, and social doctrines that shape the nation. By “literary,” I mean the traditional literary style of writing, such as the poem’s form, scope, and subject.