Whitman And The Elegy: Mythologizing Lincoln And The Poetic Reconstruction Of Mourning

<p>In Walt Whitman's mind, Abraham Lincoln represented the very essence of America and, because of this, Lincoln and his assassination were the ideal subject through which Whitman could explore the art of mourning on both individual and collective scales. The regimented order of lament, adoration, and consolation of the traditional elegy were not enough to accommodate the complex, organic mourning that Whitman sought to capture in his poems. Whitman's series of elegies following the death of Abraham Lincoln mythologized the president in ways that still permeate our historical view of Lincoln today. This essay seeks to give an in-depth explication of the ways in which Whitman consciously subverted the established traditions of the elegiac form to demonstrate that the process of grief could not be broken down to a simple formula as suggested by past elegists. </p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Master's

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English and Theatre

Grantor dc:publisher

Eastern Kentucky University

Year

2017

Author dc:creator

• Raymond, Brytani

• Elegy
• Lincoln
• Whitman
• Literature in English, North America
• United States History

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2017 Brytani Raymond

Repository record dc:identifier

https://encompass.eku.edu/etd/553

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:encompass.eku.edu:etd-1551