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Article: Lyric nationalism: Whitman, American Studies, and the New Criticism.(poet Walt Whitman)(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Texas Studies in Literature and Language
- Article date:
- June 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 University of Texas at Austin (University of Texas Press). This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The prolific novelist, poet, and critic Joyce Carol Oates recently edited a volume of Emily Dickinson's selected poems for Ecco Press. Dickinson has always occupied a vexed relationship to the American canon and the American Renaissance. Her work is not often read as explicitly patriotic as that of her contemporary Walt Whitman with his attempts to make himself commensurate with the American people. Nevertheless, Oates presents Dickinson's work in a nationalistic vein, linking her with Whitman:
Between them, our great visionary poets of the American 19th Century,
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) and Walt Whitman (1819-1892),
have come to represent ...