Whitman the Political Poet

This book deals, in depth, with Whitman as a political poet. Erkkila's aim is to repair the split between the private and the public, the personal and the political, the poet and the history, that has governed the analysis and evaluation of Whitman's work in the past. She combines a formalist and a historic approach to Whitman's work by reading the poems within the socio-political context of his times.