Engl 250F:
Whitman and Dickinson
Course Description
In the “barbaric
yawp” of Whitman and the “slant truth” of Dickinson are the
seeds of a revolution in poetics that anticipated and
inspired the rise of modernism in American literature. With
their candid inquiry on themes such as sex and the body,
death, desire, loneliness, transcendence and despair,
Whitman and Dickinson examined the human experience with an
iconoclasm, wit, and candor which remains striking and
vital today. In this course, we will read the poems and
prose of both authors and we will sample important critical
works.