Literary Shamanism and the Crisis of the Union George B. Hutchinson Literary Shamanism and the Crisis of the Union GEORGE HUTCHINSON EXAMINING WHITMAN'S CAREER AS A FORM OF PROPHETIC role-playing, George Hutchinson develops an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural method to illuminate the interrelations be tween the poet's mysticism, his aesthetic, his psychological conflicts, and his participation in the social drama of his age. The book sets Leaves of Grass against the background of a family romance of national identity, a developing civil religion, and socioeconomic transformations that brought the psychic trauma and fears of spiritual decay to mid-nineteenth-century Americans. Such stresses impelled religious phenomena tend ing toward prophecy, spiritual possession, and ecstaticism in a multifaceted movement to revitalize American culture. Within this context, Hutchinson examines Whitman's devel opment of a prophetic role and a corresponding aesthetic, showing the pattern of affliction, crisis, self-training, and mastery of the techniques of ecstacy that anthropologists have noted in shamanism and prophetic movements throughout the world. Viewing the ecstatic performance as a means of revitaliz ing a cultural identity under stress, Hutchinson reveals the ecstatic structures, functions, and techniques that are fun damental to Whitman's creativity. Close readings of the great poems and poem clusters of 1855,1860,1865-67, and 1871-72 reveal Whitman's adaptations of the ecstatic role-playing pro cess to master crises of faith—crises precipitated by historical developments but having profound psychic and spiritual resonances. By drawing upon anthropological insights into ecstatic prophecy as it relates to social change, Hutchinson implicitly demonstrates a new approach to American Studies and to the connections between literature and social history while addressing the major issues in Whitman scholarship. GEORGE HUTCHINSON is assistant professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. ISBN 0-8142-0412-0 Book and jacket design by Arrow Graphics and Typography. Cover photograph courtesy of the Collection of Rare Books, Duke University. Xhe Ecstatic QUhitman Ecstatic QVhitman Literary Shamanism & the Crisis of the Union George B. Hutchinson Ohio State University Press Columbus Copyright © 1986 by the Ohio State University Press All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Hutchinson, George, 1953 The ecstatic Whitman. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Shamanism in literature. 3. Prophecies in literature. 4. Ectasy in literature. 5. United States in literature. I. Title. PS3242.S52H88 1986 811'.3 86-877 ISBN 0-8142-0412-0 To Momma Anne and Poppa George
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