Introduction -- Literature as religion : Whitman's messianic enterprise -- The building of a reputation -- Theosophy, the occult, and Whitman's apparitions -- The character of Whitman's religion -- The creed -- The mystic hypothesis -- The strong hypothesis -- The weak hypothesis -- The denial of the hypothesis -- A gospel of beauty -- The classical roots of aestheticism -- Whitman and the platonic tradition -- From phrenology to aesthetic morality -- Whitman's treatment of the ugly : the "kosmic" vision -- Whitman and Nietzsche -- Whitman and Oscar Wilde -- The love of comrades -- A messianic mission -- The nature of comradeship -- Eduard Bertz : comradeship as veiled homosexuality -- Mystical interpretations of comradeship -- Ethical aspects of comradeship -- Religious aspects of comradeship -- Social and political aspects of comradeship -- Whitman's comradeship and Symonds's concept of Greek love -- Whitman, the moral reformer -- Poetry and ethics : Whitman's moral concern -- The character of Whitman's new morality -- An analysis of Whitman's morality : Briggs's theory -- Whitman's attitude to war -- Robert K. Martin's theory : "fucked by the earth" -- David Keubrich's theory : post-Christian millennialism -- Reynolds's theory : "immoral didacticism" -- A probable synthesis : nature, science, and evolutionary theory -- An afterthought : Traubel, homosexuality, and the Whitman myth -- A queer (theory) postscript -- A queer (theory) twist : no new species -- Whitman's disappointment and the new sexual economy -- Queer (theory) confusion and its uses.
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