Democratic Vistas (Masterplots, Revised Second Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Walt Whitman
- First Published: 1871
- Type of Work: Social criticism
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction
- Subjects: Culture, Tradition, Literature, Art or artists, Spiritual life or spirituality, Civil War, Identity, Materialism, Industrialization
Critical Evaluation:
Written when Walt Whitman was in his early fifties, Democratic Vistas demonstrates the author’s discouragement at what he saw in America. The sobering effects of the Civil War, the death of Abraham Lincoln, and the overwhelming change resulting from the industrial revolution are quite evident as Whitman attempts to introduce a plan for the development of a golden age in the New World.
Like Whitman’s poetry, the work has no substantial organization; it tends to ramble and to be repetitious. Nevertheless, in its portrait of Whitman’s...
[The entire page is 2184 words long]
