Whitman Getting Old

Folsom, Ed

doi:10.1017/9781108296830.015

Cited by 1 publication

(3 citation statements)

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“…'I' is swallowed up in the eternity of 'aye'." 11 In addition to self-identity words, the use of parentheses in Leaves of Grass has drawn attention from Whitman scholars. In fact, there was a dramatic change in the use of parentheses during Whitman's career.…”

Section: Stanzasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…20 To save Whitman's reputation, his close friend and sponsor O'Connor wrote a long article named "Good Gray Poet", transforming Whitman from a young radical into a kind and patriotic poet in the public eye. 21 Whitman was then under great pressure to live up to what he was expected to be after this rebranding process, which forced him to get rid of his early style and turned to the intentionally complicated style instead. 22 A more detailed tabulation of Latinate words in Whitman's early and late poetry can be found in the book by C. Carroll Hollis.…”

Section: Macro-etymological Analysis and Lexical Complexitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This dramatic decrease in sentiments is best explained A recent study by Ed Folsom seems to unravel the secret behind the rebound of sentiments in Whitman's late years. 43 Folsom claims that Whitman hid his poetic philosophy within the 1855 triple urge sexual chant:…”

Section: Sentiment Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Computational Approach to Walt Whitman's Stylistic Changes in Leaves of Grass

Zhu¹

2021

Preprint

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This study analyzes Walt Whitman's stylistic changes in his phenomenal work Leaves of Grass from a computational perspective and relates findings to standard literary criticism on Whitman. The corpus consists of all 7 editions of Leaves of Grass, ranging from the earliest 1855 edition to the 1891-92 "deathbed" edition. Starting from counting word frequencies, the simplest stylometry technique, we find consistent shifts in word choice. Macro-etymological analysis reveals Whitman's increasing preference for words of specific origins, which is correlated to the increasing lexical complexity in Leaves of Grass. Principal component analysis, an unsupervised learning algorithm, reduces the dimensionality of tf-idf vectors to 2 dimensions, providing a straightforward view of stylistic changes. Finally, sentiment analysis shows the evolution of Whitman's emotional state throughout his writing career.

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Section: Stanzasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Macro-etymological Analysis and Lexical Complexitymentioning

confidence: 99%