Materials . . .

Whitman and Dickinson, Spring 2009

Here is the syllabus.

Whitman and Dickinson: All the texts

Here are the texts that I ordered for the course. You do need these particular editions.

Dickinson, Emily. The Poems. Ed. R.W. Franklin. Reading edition. Cambridge: Belknap, 1999. ISBN 0674676246. There are multiple published versions of all of her poems, and we will work only with these Franklin versions.

Walt Whitman, Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate: A Tale of the Times. Ed. Christopher Castiglia and Glenn Hendler. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. ISBN13 978-0822339427.

For Whitman's poetry, we will read in the Whitman archive. Mainly from links on this page, which gives you the full text (with page images) of all seven American editions of Leaves of Grass.

We will also read a lot of this book. I will explain more on the first day of class.

Emily Dickinson's love life

For Slate, Christopher Benfrey summarizes biographical scholarship by Carol Damon Andrews, Brenda Wineapple, Genevieve Taggard, and George F. Whicher on Dickinson's early love, George Gould.

Walt Whitman, "The Child and the Profligate" (1844)

For the American Romantic Fiction seminar, Natalie Williams prepared this edition of Walt Whitman's "The Child and the Profligate." You can find the full, unformatted text plus a link for a PDF download in the extended body of this post.

All the words, Fall 2007

Students in the undergraduate survey (American Literature 1) must memorize these words and definitions. And they remain useful for students in senior- and graduate-level seminars.

Whitman and Dickinson, Fall 2007

Here is the syllabus for the graduate-level Whitman and Dickinson seminar.

Charles Wadsworth sermons online

The ATLA Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative has digitally published several sermons by Emily Dickinson's great crush, the Reverend Charles Wadsworth. They can be found by visiting the home page and searching the database for keywords Charles Wadsworth.

For the Whitman and Dickinson seminar, we will read two thanksgiving-day sermons dating to the early period of their friendship: "Politics in Religion" (1854) and "America's Mission" (1855).

Whitman and Dickinson will meet in Olin 123A

FYI.

More Dickinson readings

These four, recent, scholarly articles will be assigned reading for the Whitman and Dickinson seminar.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson's Letter to a Young Contributor (1862)

Alfred Habegger's discussion of this important essay begins on page 451 of My Wars.

Martha Nell Smith transcribed and made available this text here at emilydickinson.org.