Walt whitman and emily dickinson project in term

Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Individualism, Syntax

Excerpt from Term Paper:

Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson task, in their poetry, an individual identity that achieves its electrical power from within, hence placing a high grade on the person self. Incongruously, this premium on the specific self was very much in fashion in America at that time; from Emerson to the early on pioneers of 19th 100 years industrialism. As a result, their projections of individual power had been greatly influenced by the traditions in which they will live in. This really is just one manner in which cultural electric power influences individual power. Other ways this occurs in their poetry has to do with their very own treatment of sexuality. America during the late nineteenth century can be characterized as a time of great social upheaval, but as well as a period when gender roles had been still quite definitely strictly approved. Both Whitman and Dickinson, while challenging the cultural assumptions regarding gender in the late 19th century, also project an individual identification, perhaps even unbeknownst to them, that very much keeps in accordance with those very cultural presumptions. The individual personality projected within their poetry can be influenced by cultural electricity; Whitman and his individual identity of masculine virility and Dickinson and her person identity of feminine domesticity. Both Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson in their beautifully constructed wording project a person identity, that even though defined in opposition to cultural best practice rules, are nevertheless greatly influenced by the concepts and rhetoric circulating through American culture at the time.

In Whitman’s innovative poem “Song of Myself” he tasks an individual id that defines itself in opposition to society. As he boisterously proclaims

People I meet, the effect upon myself of my personal early life or the keep and city I reside in, or the country, the latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, creators old and new, My own dinner, dress, associates, appears, compliments, dues, the real or fancied not caring of a few man or women I love… These arrive to me days and nights and get from myself again, but are not the Me me. Apart from the yanking and hauling stands what I am”(page #).

As we observe from this passage what Whitman defines as the ME PERSONALLY, is independent from all of the workings and concerns of society. This individual gets his individual electric power, as far he’s worried, not from your society and culture he is living in, but within him self. This idea however is definitely culled through the rhetoric and ideas in the culture this individual wrote in, an replicate of familiar sentiments presented up by likes of such famous luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and others. Thus displaying how Whitman’s professions of individual power are affected by the suggestions of his culture. In the same way in Dickinson’s poem, #750, she tells us that

Growth of Man-like Regarding Nature

Gravitates within

Atmosphere, and Sunlight endorse it

But it stir – exclusively

Each – its hard Ideal

Need to achieve – Itself

Through the solitary ability

Of a Muted Life -. “(367).

Like Whitman, the identity projected in this poem of Dickinson’s achieves the power from the inside, from the solitary life, not really from contemporary society. In many of Dickinson poem’s she puts a premium within the individual self as something which is previously mentioned being touched, it is, since she says in poem# 1351, “that inalterable estate”(584). In numerous of her poems the person identity from the speaker achieves its electricity from within. For instance , poem #540, “I required my power in my Side and travelled against the World”(263-264). The significance on this similarity among Whitman and Dickinson is that it shows how their particular poetry is certainly much in discussion with the traditions they had written in, specifically the intellectual milieu recently 19th 100 years New England. The fact that they can share identical ideas regarding the individual do it yourself and task in their poetry an identification defined in opposition to society, is definitely no chance.

In “Song of Myself” Whitman portends to include both masculine and feminine characteristics, essentially identifying himself towards cultural