The purpose of this thesis is to organize and examine Walt Whitman's poetic representations and discussions of laborers and labor issues in order to argue that form a distinct "poetics" of labor in Leaves of Grass. This poetics of labor reveals that Whitman was attempting to enlarge the audience for American poetry by representing American society at work in poetry. Whitman also used labor as a poetic subject in order to justify the work of the poet in that society. In this sense, Whitman's poetics of labor is comprised of numerous demonstrations of his argument for the labor of poetry because the representation of America at work is contained within the work of the poet. The organization of this thesis rests upon a distinction between the work of the hands and the work of the mind. This distinction resonates in nineteenth century American literature, and it is especially important to debates about the status of the writer in a working democratic society. This question figures prominently in the works of Emerson and Thoreau, and a central issue for both of them is whether or not the writer should participate in the work of the hands. Whitman engages in this debate as well, and argues that the poet can participate in all kinds of work through poetic representation. He participates by representing workers in poetry, and in Whitman's argument the poet then becomes a representative of those workers. A central premise of this thesis is that Whitman's poetry of labor demonstrates an attempt to ensure that America works according to Whitman's interpretation of democracy. This is most apparent in poems where he directly addresses his working audience, and those addresses reveal a specific ideology behind Whitman's poetics of labor. That is, Whitman attempts to level the implicit hierarchical organization of different kinds of work. For instance, in such poems as "Song for Occupations" and "Song of the Broad-Axe," Whitman engages in a conversation with manual laborers in an effort to acknowledge their value and significance to the democratic process. As he celebrates their contribution, he also associates his own work with them, and argues for the · usefulness of such poetry to that process as well. In such poems as "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer'' and "To A Historian," Whitman addresses those who labor with the mind in order to include them in the dialogue, and also to argue that the majority of that work needs to be revised because its claim for authority perpetuates hierarchical distinctions. Whitman offers poetry as a solution, and argues that it is central to democracy because it "completes" all labor by fusing the work of the community with the work of shaping individual identity that comes from reading and writing poetry. This thesis draws upon New Historicist methodologies and approaches to Whitman in order to reconstruct the significance of labor in Whitman's poetics. The poetry which directly addresses laborers and labor issues in Leaves of Grass forms the basis of the argument, but Whitman's relevant prose is considered in detail as well. In particular, Democratic Vistas is examined for its claims that the "work" of poetry is itself incomplete. "Work" is used here to refer both to the aesthetic object and the effort involved in reading it. In other words, Whitman argues that the work of poetry, like the work of democracy, is a continuous, recursive process.

O objetivo desta dissertação é analisar alguns dos momentos decisivos do processo de formação da poesia norte-americana, marcados pelas quatro primeiras edições (1855, 1856, 1861,1867) de Leaves of Grass, de Walt Whitman. A escolha desses momentos sublinha o caráter engajado do projeto poético de Whitman, que não visava à mera aclimatação da poesia européia no Novo Mundo, mas sim à constituição formal de uma poesia norte-americana adequada à realidade social de seu país. Nesse sentido, a leitura das quatro primeiras edições de Leaves of Grass pressupõe dois movimentos complementares: o entendimento dessa poesia enquanto resposta aos inúmeros conflitos que perpassam as décadas de 1850 e 1860 norte-americanas, quando a modernização, encabeçada pela industrialização e pelo trabalho livre, entra em choque definitivo com estruturas sociais de origem colonial, baseadas tanto na exploração do trabalho escravo como na própria constituição descentralizada da república; e a configuração literária desses problemas, em que veremos elementos constitutivos da poesia romântica européia em relação dialética com formas locais de expressão, muitas vezes estranhas ao quadro literário do Velho Mundo, mas reforçadas pela pretensão de se fazer valer (não sem contradições) uma literatura de caráter nacional. Para tanto, nossa análise toma não apenas a longa tradição de estudos hitmanianos, que atualmente têm se dedicado à revisão histórica de Leaves of Grass centrada quase que exclusivamente na experiência social norte-americana, mas a própria tradição crítica brasileira, na qual se consolidou um importante corpo de conceitos e debates acerca da posição periférica das literaturas do Novo Mundo em relação à Europa, o que nos permite tanto colocar a literatura de Whitman em um quadro mais abrangente de formação literária como observar ali algumas questões comuns às experiências brasileira e norte- americana para a consolidação de seu sistema literário, tais como o caráter empenhado da elite literária; a busca de novas formas; a representação e afirmação, na lírica, do indivíduo e da natureza do país; as questões éticas e econômicas ligadas ao problema da escravidão; e a relação ambígua e contraditória com os movimentos literários europeus. / The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze some of the decisive moments in the making of North American poetry, determined by the development, from 1855 to 1867, of the four initial editions of Walt Whitman\'s Leaves of Grass. The choice of these remarkable moments serves to underline the engaged feature of Whitman´s poetical accomplishment, which implied not the mere transposition of European literary thought into the New World, but mainly the formal constitution of a national poetry fit for the social environment of the United States. In this sense, the analysis of these four Leaves of Grass´ editions (1855, 1856, 1861, 1867) presupposes two complementary ways: firstly the acknowledgment of Whitman´s poetry as a response to the social tensions in North American midnineteenth century, when modernity, led by free labor and industrialization, collides with colonial and pre-modern social structures, based upon slavery and the very descentralized commercial Republic constitution; secondly the literary configuration of these tensions, in which we observe elements of the literary Romanticism dialetically linked to local forms of expression, some of them alien to the literary achievements of the Old World, but reinforced by the founding project of a national literature. To attend these questions, this dissertation recovers the long tradition of Walt Whitman studies - dedicated in the present time to the historical revisioning of the poet´s works centered almost exclusively in the North American social experience - by the light of the Brazilian critical tradition, in which very important concepts and debates over the periferical position of New World literatures were consolidated. This theoretical perpective allows us not only to place Leaves of Grass in a wider perspective of New World literatures but also to build a indirect comparative view that rests upon some important questions to the North American and Brazilian literary traditions, as the engaged ethos of their literary elites; the search for new literary forms; the lyrical affirmative representation of national individuals; the economical and ethical responses to slavery; and the ambiguous and contradictory relation with European literary movements.

O objetivo desta dissertação é analisar alguns dos momentos decisivos do processo de formação da poesia norte-americana, marcados pelas quatro primeiras edições (1855, 1856, 1861,1867) de Leaves of Grass, de Walt Whitman. A escolha desses momentos sublinha o caráter engajado do projeto poético de Whitman, que não visava à mera aclimatação da poesia européia no Novo Mundo, mas sim à constituição formal de uma poesia norte-americana adequada à realidade social de seu país. Nesse sentido, a leitura das quatro primeiras edições de Leaves of Grass pressupõe dois movimentos complementares: o entendimento dessa poesia enquanto resposta aos inúmeros conflitos que perpassam as décadas de 1850 e 1860 norte-americanas, quando a modernização, encabeçada pela industrialização e pelo trabalho livre, entra em choque definitivo com estruturas sociais de origem colonial, baseadas tanto na exploração do trabalho escravo como na própria constituição descentralizada da república; e a configuração literária desses problemas, em que veremos elementos constitutivos da poesia romântica européia em relação dialética com formas locais de expressão, muitas vezes estranhas ao quadro literário do Velho Mundo, mas reforçadas pela pretensão de se fazer valer (não sem contradições) uma literatura de caráter nacional. Para tanto, nossa análise toma não apenas a longa tradição de estudos hitmanianos, que atualmente têm se dedicado à revisão histórica de Leaves of Grass centrada quase que exclusivamente na experiência social norte-americana, mas a própria tradição crítica brasileira, na qual se consolidou um importante corpo de conceitos e debates acerca da posição periférica das literaturas do Novo Mundo em relação à Europa, o que nos permite tanto colocar a literatura de Whitman em um quadro mais abrangente de formação literária como observar ali algumas questões comuns às experiências brasileira e norte- americana para a consolidação de seu sistema literário, tais como o caráter empenhado da elite literária; a busca de novas formas; a representação e afirmação, na lírica, do indivíduo e da natureza do país; as questões éticas e econômicas ligadas ao problema da escravidão; e a relação ambígua e contraditória com os movimentos literários europeus. / The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze some of the decisive moments in the making of North American poetry, determined by the development, from 1855 to 1867, of the four initial editions of Walt Whitman\'s Leaves of Grass. The choice of these remarkable moments serves to underline the engaged feature of Whitman´s poetical accomplishment, which implied not the mere transposition of European literary thought into the New World, but mainly the formal constitution of a national poetry fit for the social environment of the United States. In this sense, the analysis of these four Leaves of Grass´ editions (1855, 1856, 1861, 1867) presupposes two complementary ways: firstly the acknowledgment of Whitman´s poetry as a response to the social tensions in North American midnineteenth century, when modernity, led by free labor and industrialization, collides with colonial and pre-modern social structures, based upon slavery and the very descentralized commercial Republic constitution; secondly the literary configuration of these tensions, in which we observe elements of the literary Romanticism dialetically linked to local forms of expression, some of them alien to the literary achievements of the Old World, but reinforced by the founding project of a national literature. To attend these questions, this dissertation recovers the long tradition of Walt Whitman studies - dedicated in the present time to the historical revisioning of the poet´s works centered almost exclusively in the North American social experience - by the light of the Brazilian critical tradition, in which very important concepts and debates over the periferical position of New World literatures were consolidated. This theoretical perpective allows us not only to place Leaves of Grass in a wider perspective of New World literatures but also to build a indirect comparative view that rests upon some important questions to the North American and Brazilian literary traditions, as the engaged ethos of their literary elites; the search for new literary forms; the lyrical affirmative representation of national individuals; the economical and ethical responses to slavery; and the ambiguous and contradictory relation with European literary movements.