Article: Anachronistic Whitman.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)

Dear Editor,

Richard Tayson's "Manly Love" [Sept.-Oct. 2005 issue] presents a confused and confusing account of poet Walt Whitman's sexuality. After favorably citing Robert K. Martin's claim that "prior to Whitman there were homosexual acts but no homosexuals," Tayson contradicts Martin, asserting, "There is no question that Whitman defines, and throughout the poem ["Live Oak"] struggles with, his self-identity as a gay man." Martin is attempting precisely to question efforts like Tayson's to simplify both Whitman's work and 19th-century understandings of sexuality and sexual identity. The implication of Martin's claim is that Whitman could not possibly have ...

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