Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson: “Nature and Self ”, Ejercicios de Literatura Americana

¡Descarga Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson: “Nature and Self ” y más Ejercicios en PDF de Literatura Americana solo en Docsity! Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson: “Nature and Self ” During the XIX[th] century, Transcendentalism emerges as a new philosophical, political and literary tendency which starts as a reform movement. It seeks for the significance of the intuitive and internal thought. This movement defends the idea that the soul of the self is part of the world; that is, the individual soul is shared with the collective self. Those writers are quite critical about the society and the situation of their time because of the compulsive conformity. Transcendentalism movement is seen as a way of escape which is based on the ability of individual consciousness, self-awareness and the importance of the “self”. Besides, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are considered the most famous American poets of the XIX[th] century that become part of this particular trend like Thoreau or Emerson. Along this paper, I would try to focus my debate on the similarities and contrasts between Dickinson's poem number 328 and Whitman's work: Song of Myself (1st section) using the topics Nature and Self. [Again, your introduction should make clear in brief what position you will adopt, how you are going to argue your case wand what conclusions you hope to reach.] Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are considered the pioneers in American modernism poetry of the late middle XIX century despite of being completely different in their styles. [They're not modernists but anticipate its concerns and innovations.] Both are famous for their modern style of composing poetry and breaking with the traditional form in order to express the American ideals. Their poetry are full of different concepts such as enumeration, diverse kind of imagery, etc. Whitman breaks with the fixed form, structure of the verse and his main themes are the body, the nature, the self, taboo subjects, etc. In contrast, Dickinson leaves certain details out so it makes difficult to understand her poetry. However, she rejects the male sense of the self and she seems to be aware of the male moral for the self because it is not adequate for woman. Her poems explore her own thoughts about life, death, nature, self, etc. Walt Whitman is labeled as the poet of democracy and the father of the free verse. Song of Myself is a universal poem of Whitman's own self, that is, his own personality. [How can the idiosyncratic also be universal?] His poems are complex with long verses and he uses his own rhythm structure. [Explain.] He focuses on the self which can make every reader feel identified with each section. The section begins with “I celebrate myself, and sing myself” where the pronoun “myself” implies the collective voice, [the] cosmic and transcendental self that all of us share this part of it. He addresses through the pronouns “I, Myself” to an unknown you which includes “you”. [?] Along the poem, Whitman uses the poetic voice to allude [to] his personal experience in relation with nature and himself. Besides the reader is invited to join Whitman in his celebration and singing with him. The “Self” is a sort of song or a kind of song because Whitman brings together/joins together the Self, Nature and Us as part of the universal “I”. I think that Whitman expresses through the atom“ for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you” his idea of the atom like the universal “I” as part of the whole, that is, the self is in every man and woman. Whitman uses the image of the spear and the summer grass “ I loafe and invite my soul / I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass” as a metaphor for the leaves' forms because it can be understood as the form of a weapon. I think that he chooses the spear and the summer grass as a metaphor fro spring time where the flowers bloom, and perhaps the image can refer to the process that leads to maturity like the natural cycle. In the third stanza, Whitman begins with the image of “My tongue, every atom of my blood....”. I think that he uses the physical image to suggest that the soul is found through the Self while he is celebrating in Nature. [Explain what you mean by this.] Whitman gives the description of the cosmic and transcendental self, so he refers to things that are in nature and those that are not human at all. I think that through this stanza is full of biographical details of his personal life “...old in perfect health begin,...”. However, I consider that the perfect health can symbolize the cycle of life as part of the cycle of nature, so it can mean that time is passing by for me and for nature at the same time. I think that the line “creeds and school” can be related to Nature and what we learn looking at it because our experience is empirical, we learn everything through searching ourselves and trying to find any answer in nature. The last stanzas represent the self as a free entity as it can be. Through Whitman's voice, we know that the Self like Nature is part of society. Perhaps “nature without check with original energy” may mean that the Self transcends the limits of society and the cosmic self is the original meaning that creates Nature. Nevertheless, Whitman concludes that the cosmic self is what originates Nature and Self. [Try to be more specific by connecting your generalizations with the text itself.] Emily Dickinson is an important poet in the American literature world at her time. Her poetry is characterized by the lack of titles, continuous usage of dashes, short verses, simple and definite structure, etc. Through her poems as Whitman, many details of her private life are revealed so we are aware of what she perceives from the world. The poem is divided into five stanzas with four lines per each. In the first stanza, Emily Dickinson describes the presence of a bird that she sees through her window “A bird, came down the Walk”. I think that the bird represents the wilderness that lives in Nature so she gives her vision of the bird. However, I think that the bird depicts Dickinson's personality surrounded by society and nature, that is, she feels small, weak, fragile like a bird when she is outside her room. [Does she identify with the bird here or, rather, is