Walt Whitman and the Week of Modern Arts in Brazil

Resumo

In English Literature a significant change took place in 1798 originated by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge who in Lyrical Ballads broke with the reigning school of Pope and the spirit of the 18th century to achieve a new art freer in form and suited to the spirit of their time: Coleridge with poems of romantic wonder, Wordsworth with poems of nature and simple humanity. The new poetic tradition established by them and later romantic poets remained in authority in America until 1855 when the revolt of Walt Whitman, breaking away from the past, proclaimed a new age for America's poetry. Whitman considered himself - and was to some extent for his time - a literary radical, and as such he did not hesitate to write essays, poems, or utter remarks which among other things anathematized the poetry of his day.