Walt Whitman, O Captain! My Captain!

Jennifer McQuillan (Independent Scholar - North America)

Ed. by Stephen E. Meats, Pittsburg State University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.2: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth Century, 1783-1900.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1865

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poem

Resources

When Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass in 1855, he believed that in his poetry “[…] he shared three greatnesses – Love, Democracy, and Religion” (Bradley and Blodgett xxiv). His sweeping masterpiece sought to celebrate not only the individual human being, but also the individuality of America as a whole – a democracy of diverse citizens all contributing to the creation of a country unlike any other in the world. How crushing, then, for Whitman to bear witness to his beloved nation turning against itself, its blades of grass now dripping with the blood of both Union and Confederate soldiers. Love, democracy, and religion now hung in the balance. Though Whitman believed the war would hasten the end to the “social …

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1807 words

Citation: McQuillan, Jennifer . "O Captain! My Captain!". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 August 2015 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35583, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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