Walt Whitman's Catalogues: Rhetorical Means for Two Journeys in "Song of Myself"

Abstract

VV YALT WHITMAN'S DEVOTED CRITICS in the nineteenth century, such as Edward Dowden, defended the poet's use of catalogues on the grounds that the catalogues were outgrowths of the poet's democratic spirit. Dowden wrote, No single person is the subject of Whitman's song, or can be; the individual suggests a group, and the group a multitude, each unit of which is as interesting as every other unit, and possesses equal claims to recognition. Hence the recurring tendency of his poems to become catalogues of persons and things.' Although Dowden's position was defensive rather than critical, his comments point to the important relationship between the catalogues and Whitman's unity through diversity, a relationship pursued more precisely by critics in this century. Modern examinations of the catalogues have helped to explain why Whitman used the catalogues, but these examinations have eschewed the issue of how the catalogues work.2 As modern critics have suggested, Whitman's catalogues express his transcendentalism. The catalogues also control the reader's involvement in the poet's movement from the singular to the cosmic. An examination of the catalogues in Song of Myself will show that the catalogues are written in such ways as to manipulate reader involvement. Song of Myself is a history of the poet's movement from loafing individual to active spirit. But the poet's movement is paralleled by the reader's movement from assuming to 'cresum-