The Civil War as Revolutionary Reenactment: Walt Whitman's "The Centenarian's Story"

Abstract

Argues that Whitman's "poetic formalism" in "The Centenarian's Story" "stemmed from conventional themes deeply rooted in remembrances about the Revolution that pervaded the nation throughout the nineteenth century," and offers a reading of Whitman's poem against the backdrop of popular writings about Revolutionary War veterans, concluding that Whitman was "a participant in the trends of collective remembrance located in popular literature" as he "portrayed the Civil War . . as a revolutionary reenactment--an intricate replaying with new variations--of challenges and heroics past."