Date of Award
2020
Document Type
Honors Thesis (Open Access)
Department
Colby College. English Dept.
Advisor(s)
Chris A. Walker
Second Advisor
Katherine Stubbs
Abstract
Places the naturalist Alexander Von Humboldt's proto-ecological ideas in conversation with Walt Whitman's poetry to show how the poet developed an ecopoetics in conversation with the natural sciences of his time, with specific attention to Von Humboldt's theory of the "kosmos" - by which Whitman's poetic persona self-identified. These recognitions are combined with how Whitman's idealized version of the American poet as a “kosmos” creates a political ecology in Whitman’s work, placing his ecopoetics into environmental discourses that resonate from their origin in the nineteenth century to our present ecological moment today.
Keywords
Von Humboldt, Whitman, Cosmos, Ecopoetics, Leaves of Grass
Recommended Citation
Theyerl, Benjamin, ""They Shall be a Kosmos:" Alexander Von Humboldt and the Ecopoetics of Walt Whitman" (2020). Honors Theses. Paper 1009.https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/1009
Included in
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Philosophy of Science Commons, United States History Commons