Walt Whitman's Formalism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4375056 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Johanna Winant (West Virginia University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 59-81 |
| Publication date | 2020-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Poetics Today (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0333-5372 • E-ISSN: 1527-5507 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/03335372-7974086 |
| OpenAlex | W3020931832 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 37 |
In this article, the author argues that we should understand Walt Whitman's catalog as a poetic form that is also a logical form - enumerative induction. Whitman's catalogs - his characteristic technique of generating long lists - have long been recognized as central to his poetics. The list, or enumeration, is also the most basic form of inductive reasoning. By recognizing that Whitman reasons logically through his poetic form, not only is the common account of Whitman changed, but the concept of form must be revised in three crucial ways. First, form should not be defined in opposition to poetic content- this is a false definitional binary. Second, form and free verse are another false binary, as poems can be written in free verse and also have form, as Whitman's poetry is and does. Third, form is not just a rubric with which critics interpret poems but the logic by which poems interpret the world
Art · Literature · Poetics · Poetry · Digital Humanities and Scholarship · French Literature and Poetry · Philosophy · Poetry Analysis and Criticism
Risk Society
Democracy in America
An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding
The Taming of Chance
Theory of the Lyric
The Emergence of Probability
Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays
The Politics of Labor and the Poet’s Work
Die Affordanzen der Liste
Economy of the Unlost
Fictions of Form in American Poetry
Walt Whitman's America
Walt Whitman's America
Whitman the Political Poet
Critical Response III Response to Jonathan Kramnick and Anahid Nersessian, “Form and Explanation
Risk society
Fact, fiction, and forecast
Literary Genres as Norms and Good Habits
Whitman Unbound
Form and Explanation
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |