Whitman and Dickinson

The surge in publication on Walt Whitman that began with the sesquicentennial of the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 2005 has begun to subside; however, 2008 was marked by a major study of Whitman's disciples, a significant consideration of Whitman's developing political views and evolving persona leading up to his career as a poet, and a collection of wide-ranging essays on Whitman from a 2005 conference at the College of New Jersey. There were in addition more than a dozen substantial scholarly articles, many of them in the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. Much of the vitality in Whitman studies now includes online resources such as the ever-growing and authoritative Walt Whitman Archive and the Mickle Street Review, as well as a variety of collaborative, educational projects such as Looking for Walt Whitman and The Vault at Pfaff's. Overall, recent Whitman scholarship has become less theoretically inflected, more historical and biographical, perhaps reflecting a growing emphasis on reaching audiences beyond academe.

In Dickinson studies the year saw a notable increase in book publications consistent with broad growth across the field. The surge in book publications, together with important chapters and scholarly essays, signaled expanding interest in Dickinson's transatlantic presence, the role of religion in her writing, and the tendency among scholars to unite cultural studies with manuscript criticism and the analysis of prosody.

i Walt Whitman

a. Books

The year's most notable publication is Michael Robertson's Worshipping Walt: The Whitman Disciples (Princeton), a group biography and a major reassessment of Whitman's followers in the United States and England from the Civil War to the beginning of the 1920s. Its chapters detail the disciples' responses to Whitman's poetry and their personal relationships with him: "William O'Connor and John Burroughs: Reading Whitman's New Bible," "Anne Gilchrist: Infatuation and Discipleship," "R. M. Bucke: Whitman and Cosmic Consciousness," "John Addington Symonds, Edward Carpenter, Oscar Wilde: Whitman and Same-Sex Passion," "J.  W. Wallace and the Eagle Street College: 'Blazing More Fervidly Than Any,'" and "Horace Traubel and the Walt Whitman Fellowship: The Gospel according to Horace." While the accounts of the nine major figures in this study will be familiar to Whitman scholars (most have been given book-length treatments), the strength of Robertson's project is that it brings the disciples together into a coherent narrative that recovers Whitman's role as a religious or prophetic figure, one who merged democratic politics, spirituality, and sexuality with a powerful, original form of poetry. Set in the context of a variety of interconnected religious movements such as spiritualism and theosophy, Whitman's vision was compelling to many readers, but, Robertson argues, he failed to become the founder of a religion because he was too individualistic and opposed to dogmas. Moreover, Robertson continues, Whitman was appropriated and redefined as primarily a literary figure, which systematically excluded his spiritual significance and the devotional writing of Whitman's disciples from the discourse sanctioned by institutional literary scholarship. Though primarily concerned with the varieties of religious experience inspired by Whitman, Robertson shows how there was a reinforcing sexual undercurrent to the devotion of the disciples to Whitman and each other, and he makes an indisputable case for the importance of the disciples in the establishment of Whitman as a figure of international importance. His afterword strikes a balance between Whitman's accomplishments as a poet and his development of "a modern, inclusive spirituality that reaches across the divides of gender, race, and sexual orientation." In effect, Worshipping Walt rebuilds the bridge between literary scholars and the community of spiritual seekers who continue to find great value in Whitman's work.

The timely publication of Sheila Rowbotham's monumental biography Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love (Verso) fills in many of the details of the life and work of Whitman's foremost English disciple, and several chapters deal specifically with Carpenter's relationship with Whitman and his circle of admirers. However, the entire biography contains information pertaining to Whitman, and it is an indispensable addition to our knowledge of Whitman's...