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History of the United States I / Unit 13   USH1 1813 short lesson, about 20 seconds

Whitman

Captions available

The idea

Walt Whitman published twelve poems as Leaves of Grass in eighteen fifty-five, celebrating individual subjective experience as the source of meaning.

In practice

Song of Myself opening by celebrating himself, and assuming the reader will assume the same.

Where people slip

The poem then unites the individual with all people through transcendent bonds, which is individualism arriving at its own opposite.

Your place on the trail

Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.

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