Whitman’s Sympathies

Abstract

This essay explores five figures of “sympathy” at work in Walt Whitman’s writings, with a focus on Leaves of Grass. Of particular note is the way Whitman presents sympathy as not only a moral sentiment but also a more-than-human natural force that draws bodies together. Sympathy was a key term in the lexicon of nineteenth-century American political debates, and we find in Whitman and others elements of a non-modern sense of sympathy as a vital or physical force operating below, through, and beyond human bodies.

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