DONALD ROSS
210L Lind Hall, (612) 625-5585
rossj001@tc.umn.edu
Department of English, University of Minnesota


"Emerson's Stylistic Influence on Whitman," American Transcendental Quarterly, No. 25 (1975), 41-51.

Whitman was clearly affected or influenced by Emerson and was deferential to Emerson's reputation. It is clear that Emerson's verse does not resemble Whitman's. By looking at passages from Emerson's prose, specifically "The Poet," as if they were free verse, a wide range of prosodic, lexical, syntactic, and organizational parallels can be seen with Whitman's 1855 poems. The features of composition cited for Whitman's style, therefore, are found throughout Emerson's essays. The common base for both Emerson's essays and Whitman's free verse is nineteenth-century American oratory, which may account for the fact that few of Whitman's contemporaries commented on his style, now seen to be experimental and highly original.


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