本系列旨在为学生引荐英美文学名家，内容亲和，语言生动，对有意提高西方文学素养的读者很有吸引力。

沃尔特·惠特曼是19世纪最具创新精神和最具影响力的美国诗人之一。此书以他的传世之作《草叶集》为中心，为研究惠特曼提供了基础。除了对惠特曼的主要作品作深入研究，书中还涉及惠特曼的生平、其所处时代的历史和文化以及评论家对其作品的批评。这些使我们对惠特曼本人及其如何成为美国文学界核心人物有了全面的了解。

Preface

Chapter 1 Life

Youth and literary apprenticeship (1819-1850)

The emergence of the poet (1851-1860)

The war and its aftermath (1861-1873)

The period of reflection and decline(1873-1892)

Chapter 2 Historical and cultural contexts

Democracy

The body

The land

The culture

Chapter 3 Poetry before the Civil War

1855: "Song of Myself"

Other poems dating from the 1855 Leaves of Grass

1856: poems of sexuality and the body

1856: poems of the earth

1856: "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

1860: Sea-Drift poems

1860: gendered clusters -"Children of Adam" and "Calamus"

Chapter 4 Poetry after the Civil War

Elegiac poems

The emergence of the image

Minor poetic modes

Chapter 5 Prose works

The 1855 preface

Democratic Vistas

Specimen Days

Chapter 6 Critical reception

The first fifty years, 1855-1905

1905-1955

1955-2005

Notes

Further reading

Index