Jot down a variety of search terms or phrases. Use the space provided to list them and record the number of results you get for different ones.
-Walt Whitman (author)
1,481 results
-Walt Whitman (subject)
8,003 results
-Walt Whitman (author) biography (subject)
3 results
-Walt Whitman (subject) biography (subject)
269 results
-Walt Whitman (author) Literature (subject)
17 results
-Walt Whitman (subject) literature (subject)
3,243 results
-Walt Whitman (author) politics (subject)
2 results
-Walt Whitman (subject) politics (subject)
114 results
-Walt Whitman (author) nonfiction (subject)
1 result
-Walt Whitman (subject) nonfiction (subject)
648 results
-Walt Whitman (author) poetry (subject)
86 results
-Walt Whitman (subject) poetry (subject)
2,635 results
-Walt Whitman (author) transcendentalism (subject)
1 result
-Walt Whitman (subject) transcendentalism (subject)
106 results
-Walt Whitman (author) economics (subject)
2 results
-Walt Whitman (subject) economics (subject)
108 results
Practice narrowing and/or expanding results by date, type, language, etc. Describe your results:
Many of my results based on the above terms I used were limited. I found this to be surprising because many of my subject terms were related to subjects that Whitman often wrote about. I therefore expected to find many scholarly articles or books related to the subjects he wrote about. A narrow but best option out of the variety I had was Walt Whitman poetry with 86 results. This is most likely because much of Whitman’s work is poetry. When I looked through on why there is such a gap in results, I found that most texts under Whitman are variations and editions of his own work. I found about 7 Leaves of Grass copies.
This changed though when I switched Whitman from the author category to the subject category. It made it so when I reentered the previous search terms, I suddenly had hundreds or thousands of results for each one. To slim this down more, I would then go through sorting it into peer reviewed articles, books, and academic journals. This change overall was surprising compared to my original results.
Annotated Bibliography
Baker, David. “Song of Sanity.” The Virginia Quarterly Review, vol. 88, no. 2, Mar. 2012, p. 7. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.une.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsbro&AN=edsbro.A302530505&site=eds-live&scope=site.
This piece walks us through multiple pieces by Whitman to answer one question, what is sane about death and what does it mean to be sane. The author then looks at multiple pieces of work to prove this argument, picking out passages that relate to Whitman’s use of death as sanity. One approach the author uses to answer the asked question is examining the sensory language and mood in each work. This then is analyzed in the broader scope of what the main argument is. The author then ends his piece stating how the element of touch and connecting to each other through thought is the meaning behind sanity. Its significance is that it is a vision for a “perfect” society where we are all sane and understood.
Bromwich, David. “Whitman’s Assumptions: ‘Song of Myself,’ in ‘Leaves of Grass,’ Walt Whitman.” Social Research, vol. 85, no. 3, Sept. 2018. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.une.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsbig&AN=edsbig.A562212962&site=eds-live&scope=site
This article goes over one specific piece by Whitman, Song of Myself, and the elements that are play in its analysis. I would say that this piece is an overall analysis of Whitman’s work, devoid of a clear argument rather than what the author is choosing to look at. Throughout the piece, he looks at elements such as characterization, catalogue, rhapsody and more. At the end, the author explains that this analyzation is significant because it puts this piece of work by Whitman and him himself into the “thinker” category. Meaning, that this singular piece of work is unlike anything that has been produced up until its time. For the author, he says this is because of Whitman’s stance on democracy.
Engels, Jeremy David. “Kosmic Rhetoric: Reading Democracy alongside Walt Whitman and the Bhagavad Gita.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 105, no. 1, 13 Dec. 2018, pp. 68–97., https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2018.1553304.
The author states the goal of this essay being to inspire other rhetorical scholars to reconsider and debate about the assumptions behind democracy and politics today. They do this by using Whitman and the Bhagavad Gita to display how they challenged the foundations of democracy in America. In Whitman, the author takes “kosmic rhetoric” and his similarities to Gita in order to build an argument. Their final concluding statements of why this is important is because of what politicians and rhetoric users could learn from Whitman and Gita when discussing democracy.
Gregerson, Linda. “The Self in the Poem.” The Virginia Quarterly Review, vol. 88, no. 2, Mar. 2012, p. 17. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.une.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsbro&AN=edsbro.A302617351&site=eds-live&scope=site.
This work looks at how Whitman has changed what is American poetic speech and the self within his work. The author can do this my examining Whitman’s work and public life throughout his life. There is a tie between what he writes about and what was going in within his life. The author does this to create a paper trail for the reader to follow. How each of his works connects back to the importance of self in the world and how its original compared to other poets. The significance of what the author is trying to say is that they are attempting to point out something that was considered in past examinations of Whitman. That Whitman urges us to look at the self and us as a being if we were whole, if we could understand every single being as one. This could be seen as significant as something for life or future readership in Whitman and other poets.
Plotica, Luke. “Singing Oneself or Living Deliberately: Whitman and Thoreau on Individuality and Democracy.” Transaction of the Charles S. Peirce Society, vol. 53, no. 4, Oct. 2017, pp. 601–21. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.une.idm.oclc.org/10.2979/trancharpeirsoc.53.4.06.
The subject of this scholarly article is the main purpose of both Whitman and Henry David Thoreau’s work, which is the individual, and its connection to a democratic society. They present it through multiple perspectives such as social changes, economics, and political conditions. They argue how the presentation of individualism in Whitman and Thoreau’s work is different. Whitman focused on an expansive individual who experiences the world based upon external forces. Thoreau’s focused on a centered individual who experiences the world based upon their own principles and morals. Both of their subjects then come together to the larger article topic of democracy. With this background information, the author focuses their argument on how both of their views are still important today, and that they inform how we analyze democracy today. Their argument is significant because it offers an advantage of how we look at the relationship of the individual and democratic involvement in the past and future of politics.
