Re-Writing the Eugenic Whitman in Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days 2005

Authors : Perin GÜREL

Pages : 89-112

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Publication Date : 2014-04-01

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :Walt Whitman’s poetry and essays weave complex rhetorical links between American nature, the human body, and democracy.2 At the conclusion of his autobiographical collection of prose, Specimen Days 1882 , Whitman lucidly cemented these links in an essay titled “Nature and Democracy—Morality.” The poet, “before departure,” emphasized his belief that democracy, “as manifested in the grand races of mechanics and work people,” needs to be recharged, “fibred, vitalized, by regular contact with out-door light and air and growths, farm-scenes, animals, fields, trees, birds [….]” 200 .
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