Introduction. "This mighty convulsion": Whitman and Melville write the Civil War / Christopher Sten and Tyler Hoffman -- The interplay of drum-taps and battle-pieces. "The foulest crime": Whitman, Melville, and the cultural life of a phrase / Ed Folsom -- Materiality in the Civil War poetry of Herman Melville and Walt Whitman / Vanessa Steinroetter -- Battle-pieces, drum-taps, and the aesthetic of aftermath in Civil War photography / Sarah L. Thwaites -- Reconciliation as sequel and supplement: drum-taps and battle-pieces / Peter J. Bellis -- Re-imagining drum taps. Whitman's disarming poetics: recuperating the language of the body in drum-taps / Kyle Barton -- Embodying the book: mourning for the masses in Walt Whitman's drum-taps / Adam Bradford -- Drum-taps and the chaos of war / Cody Marrs -- Re-imagining battle-pieces. Melville and the lord of hosts: holy war and divine warrior rhetoric in battle-pieces / Jonathan A. Cook -- "Nearer to us in nature": the US South and Herman Melville's literary lost cause / Timothy Marr -- Melville's historical imagination in "the house-top" / Christopher Ohge -- Melville's reconstructions: the "moorish maid" in "Lee in the Capitol" / Brian Yothers -- Drum-taps and battle-pieces brought together / Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and the American Civil War poetry anthology / Ian Faith -- List of American Civil War poetry anthologies.
Summary:
"While several essays treating the Civil War poetry of Whitman and Melville together have appeared in scholarly journals over the past few decades, "This Mighty Convulsion" is the first book exclusively devoted to the Civil War writings of these two poets, arguably the most important poets of the most convulsive event in American history. The essays brought together in this volume add significantly to recent critical appreciation of the skill and sophistication of these poets; growing recognition of the complexity of their views of the war; and heightened appreciation for the anxieties they harbored about its aftermath. These essays also add to our critical understanding of the distinctive qualities of the two poets and to a clear appreciation of how their views converged or diverged from one another. Both in the ways they come together and seem mutually influenced, and in the ways they disagree, Whitman and Melville, whether in the smallest of signifiers or in the larger ideological currents of their poetry, grapple with the casualties, complications, and anxieties of the War while highlighting its irresolution. Although often approaching the War and its effects with different assumptions and with markedly different frames of mind, both poets shed light on the conflicting impulses behind the War and probe the gaps and fractures in a way that recognizes the ongoing cultural work of reparation and healing across racial and regional lines." -- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.