Specialising in comparative literature, Behnam M. Fomeshi is interested in Iranian studies, American studies and in particular the intersection of the two. In addition to a Humboldt fellowship, he has received several grants including two for research at the University of St Andrews and Leiden University.

• Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION 1 Walt Whitman’s Life and Works 2 From Democratic Politics to Democratic Poetics Whitman’s Poetic Innovations Whitman’s Poetic Innovations and Democracy 3 Democracy and NationalismIntertwined Democracy and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century America Literary Democracy in Nineteenth-Century American Nationalism Leaves of Grass: Democratic National Poetry 4 A Persian Translation of Whitman The Persian Constitutional Movement and American Literature The New Intelligentsia and Poetry The First Translator of Whitman The First Translation of Whitman in Persia 1943 Reception of Whitman’s Translation 5 Critical Reception of Whitman Literary Modernism and the Initial Reception of Whitman N.m.Y.sh.j, New Poetry and Whitman A N.m.ic Whitman: An Urban Innovative Poet 6 Creative Reception of Whitman “God's Weaver” and “A Noiseless Patient Spider” The Emergence of a Mixed-Breed Spider: When Two Literary Minds Meet 7 Political Reception of Whitman Poetic Modernism and Iranian Left Persian Poetic Modernism’s Oppositional Position 8 A Persian Translation of Whitman’s Image “The Laughing Philosopher” in a Persian Costume Persian Poetry, Iranian Politics and Whitman’s Image 9 A Post-2009 Reception of Whitman A Persian Mystic Poet on the Front Cover The Game Is Not Over Yet: The Rival Discourses Emerge The Interaction of Competing Discourses CONCLUSION CHRONOLOGY BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX