ISHU 4150 - Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman

This course compares the work of America’s two 19th-century poetic giants. Reading substantial selections from the work of each poet, students will examine their visions of the nature of consciousness and the individual’s changing relationship to God, death, nature, society, love, and art. The course also examines the influence of the Enlightenment, Puritanism, Romanticism, and Transcendentalism, and considers each poet’s work in the context of an America transformed by the Civil War, increasing commercialism, the influx of immigrants, the decline of Calvinism, and ascendancy of science.

Credits: 3