| This dissertation offers a rhetorical analysis of the first (1855) edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass in order to understand his mysticism.; Whitman's mysticism has three main aspects: his professed mystical understanding of the cosmos, his confessed mystical experience of loving union with the cosmos, and his offered poetry as an aid to mystical exercise for his readers to come to their own mystical understandings and experiences. While most forms of mysticism are best understood in the context of a specific religious tradition, Whitman self-consciously poses a mysticism free from any religious tradition. Whitman's mysticism, moreover, is shown to be characterized, quite contrary to most mystical traditions of the West, by his praise of the body as the soul's equal and of carnal desire as properly attending spiritual love.; A rhetorical analysis reveals how Whitman's mysticism contributes to his self-understanding as a poet and as a poetic persona in his poems, to his attitude toward his readers as self-reliant souls also worthy of self-celebration, and to his appreciation of the cosmos as omnierotic and omnific, yet ultimately unknowable beyond negative mystical namings uttered as part of positive celebratory prayers.; This dissertation concludes by highlighting Whitman's mysticism in contrast, first, with critical philosophies skeptical of mystical experience and, second, with traditional visions of ultimate reality that give greater consideration to the problem of suffering—tragedy, history, and eschatology. In the end, Whitman is shown to offer a vision of possible erotic participation in the cosmos that he calls, acknowledging all the pains and possibilities of particular circumstances, “mystic realism.”... |
