What fascinated me was the project that considered the original reviews about LoG by some of whitmans contemporaries.
I want to study the contrasts between some of the early reviews with some more modern reviews in an effort to understand how a certain era or consciousness of literary review will percieve a creative work.
As a writer, I want to understand if maybe people will read my work and hate it and possibly recognize it as something more perhaps later. I don't know if I am wording my interest carefully...
I'm thinking about marking up 4 reviews that are negative marking negative and harsh statements with some commentary and comparing them to modern reviews and outlining compliments and statements which remark on whitmans genius.
That's an interesting way to think about it, looking into the waves of popularity of Whitman, like how some people are shit while they are alive and only later are recognized for their brillance. I know a lot of past instances have more societal influences like the masses couldn't access the artform or the artist hid it from the world etc. In the case of Whitman, I think we have come to the conclusion that he was before his time (or was he???) so I am excited to hear what you have to say on this/research.
ReplyDeleteIs Whitman- a cult classic? How do you plan to illustrate your research?
I have a suggestion . . how about expanding on the contemporary reviews . . .e.g. what did Dana or Eliot or Griswold say about other contemporary texts . . can you reconstruct the "taste' of these contemporaries? . . especially interesting then to locate how Whitman/1855 fits or doesn't fit into this contemporary literary taste . .
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