New critical works on Whitman and Melville

Special Collections’ exhibit “Voices of the Civil War” features Walt Whitman and Herman Melville, who both tried to grapple with the violence and suffering caused by the American Civil War through their poetry. On display are first-edition copies of Whitman’s Drum-taps and Melville’s Battle-Pieces and Aspects of War.

The library collects all printed works by and about Whitman and Melville, from their earliest works to modern editions, biographies, and literary criticism. Here are some of the newest additions to these collections:

John Michael Corrigan, American Metempsychosis: Emerson, Whitman, and the New Poetry. Fordham Univ. Press, 2012.

William E. Engel, Early Modern Poetics in Melville and Poe. Ashgate, 2012.

International Melville Society Conference (2007). Secret Sharers: Melville, Conrad and Narratives of the Real.  M-Studio, 2011.

Nathaniel Philbrick, Why Read Moby-Dick? Viking, 2011.