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Similarities Between Whitman And Emily Dickinson

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A During the 1800’s, Rebel and a Recluse would change the landscape of American Literature forever. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson would skillfully and passionately write several a hundred poems between them, and while they were seldom appreciated in the years of the authors, they would become treasured during the time after them. Walt Whitman was born in 1819, and at the age of 11 was deprived of a normal childhood education because his father wanted to recapture the families lost glory. The Whitman’s were once a wealthy family, owning a good deal of farmland in the New York state’s long island (Walt Whitman Biography, n.d.). Similarly, Emily Dickinson would finish most of her childhood education, attending two different academies for a total of eight years (Emily Dickinson Biography, n.d.). While it is not known whether Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson knew each other, their one commonality is that they both loved literature. Together the Rebel and Recluse changed the way that Literature operates through their differing but similar viewpoints and literary styles. Four poems make their perspectives on gender particularly apparent, Whitman’s Song of Myself part I (pp. 1024-1025), The Wound-Dresser part 4 (p. 1082) and Dickinson’s 207 [214] (p. 1195), 269 [249] …show more content…

The first version of the poems was self-published in the year 1855, though they were met with little commercial success. This lackluster commercial success is precisely what made Whitman’s poem’s so unique; a disregard for established literary form and an unrepentant interest in topics considered taboo at the time (Walt Whitman Biography, n.d.). It was this first version of the Leaves of Grass, which caught the eye of an admirer, Ralph Waldo Emerson encouraged the Rebel to continue his work, while his own work would inspire the Rebel to begin her

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