ENGL3021

Presentation Topic: Walt Whitman

James Elias u5333810
For this presentation I reflected on the role of the I or Self in Whitmans
poem Song of Myself.
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Fist I began by locating Whitmans philosophy in its context. I spoke

about how Whitmans philosophy had much in common with the
Unitarianism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, of whom Whitman was a
protg. I then noted that Emersons own Unitarianism shares much
in common with the philosophy of the German idealists such as Kant
and Hegel.

My second point considered the way in which Whitman uses the

pronoun I in his poem. I referenced the opening stanza of the poem
as indicative of how Whitman desired his poem to be read, that is,
with the reader in the place of the narrative I. I this sense, the
poem should be read as a sort of chant which offers the reader an
insight to Whitmans transcendence.

I then went into more detail on the form of this transcendence,

trying to express what I saw as Whitmans sentiment. Using the 5th
chant as an example, I tried to demonstrate Whitmans
transcendence as the synthesis of the particular and the universal,
the way that each immanent manifestation holds the entire
universe, and how the universe is aligned with each insignificant
manifestation.

I then compared a section of Whitmans poem with a section of a

poem by John Donne, as I thought this would be a helpful contrast to
Whitmans own ideology. This contrast, I hope, expressed that for
Whitman, a single human death does not affect humankind, that
only the whole should be considered; that the particular is
insignificant.

I think that the class responded well to my presentation, and the

discussion on Whitmans transcendentalism was productive and
interesting. We then moved onto a more specific section regarding
perspective and selfhood, which both corroborated what I had been
discussing and opened a space for several different interpretations
of Whitmans work.