Now, nearly forty years after its original translation into English,  Roger Asselineau's complete and magisterial biography of Walt Whitman  will remind readers of the complex weave of traditions in Whitman  scholarship. It is startling to recognize how much of our current  understanding of Whitman was already articulated by Asselineau nearly  half a century ago. Throughout its eight hundred pages, The  Evolution of Walt Whitman speaks with authority on a vast range of  topics that define both Whitman the man and Whitman the mythical  personage. Remarkably, most of these discussions remain fresh and  relevant, and that is in part because they have been so influential.In particular, The Evolution of Walt Whitman  inaugurated the study of Leaves of Grass as a lifelong work in  progress, and it marked the end of the habit of talking about Leaves  as if it were a single unified book. Asselineau saw Whitman's poetry  “not as a body of static data but as a constantly changing continuum  whose evolution must be carefully observed.” Throughout Evolution,  Asselineau placed himself in the role of the observer, analyzing  Whitman's development with a kind of scientific detachment. But behind  this objective persona burned the soul of a risk taker who was willing  to rewrite Whitman studies by bravely proposing what was then a  controversial biographical source for Whitman's art—his homosexual  desires.The Evolution of Walt Whitman is a reminder that  extraordinary works of criticism never exist in and of themselves. In  this expanded edition, Roger Asselineau has provided a new essay  summarizing his own continuing journey with Whitman. A foreword by Ed  Folsom, editor of the Walt Whitman Quarterly, regards Evolution  as the genesis of contemporary Whitman studies.

The Evolution of Walt Whitman: The Creation of a Personality

Biographies & Memoirs

Asselineau, Roger

Arts & Literature

Belknap Press of Harvard University

Hospital Sketches (The John Harvard Library)

Medical Books

ALCOTT,LOUISA MAY

Administration & Medicine Economics

Here at last is the definitive Keats―an edition of John Keats’s poems that embodies the readings the poet himself most probably intended. The culmination of a tradition of literary and textual scholarship, it is the work of the one scholar best qualified to do the job.
Largely because of the wealth and complexity of the manuscript materials and the frequency with which first printings were based on inferior sources, there has never been a thoroughly reliable edition of Keats. Indeed, in The Texts of Keats’s Poems Jack Stillinger demonstrated that fully one third of the poems as printed in current standard editions contain substantive errors. This edition is the first in the history of Keats scholarship to be based on a systematic investigation of the transmission of the texts. The readings given here represent in each case, as exactly as can be determined, the version that Keats preferred. The chronological arrangement of the poems and the full record of variants and manuscript alterations (presented in a style that will be clear to the general reader as well as useful to the scholar) display the development of Keats’s poetic artistry. Notes at the back provide dates of composition, relate extant manuscripts and early printings, and explain the choices of texts.
The London Times said of Stillinger’s earlier study of the texts: “Thanks to Mr. Stillinger a revolution in Keats studies is at hand.” Here is the crucial step in that revolution.

The Poems of John Keats

Literature & Fiction

KEATS, JOHN

Poetry

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