Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Democracy and mysticism are two prominent themes of Walt Whitman's writings, yet few critics have explored the connections that may exist between these areas. Some critics have noted that Whitman holds an ideal of "spiritual democracy," in which all people are equal due to their identity with a transcendent self such as that found in "Song of Myself," but they have not identified the best philosophical model for such a political viewpoint. I believe that the parallel between Whitman's thought and Vedantic mysticism, already developed by V. K. Chart and others, may be expanded to account for Whitman's political thought. Past studies of Whitman and Vedanta have focused only on the advaitic aspects of his writing, but in his later years he came to adopt a visistadvaitic stance similar to that of Ramanuja. In the political sphere, his concept of a Brahmanic self shared by all people led him to not only believe that all people are equal, but that they also possess the capacity to become contributors to a democratic society. Whitman felt that the poet was the primary means by which the masses could attain mystical consciousness and the concomitant social harmony. The ideal poet described in Democratic Vistas and the Preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass serves as a mediator between the people as they are and Whitman's ideal of a completely unified democratic society and thereby parallels the Vedantic guru's function of bridging the relative and absolute levels of reality. / Department of English

Thesis--Universität Bern. / "Diese Arbeit erscheint im Buchhandel als Band 79 der ... Sammlung Sprache und Dichtung." Includes bibliographical references.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

This thesis examines Walt Whitman's friendships with many of his contemporaries in New York, Boston, Washington and Camden, and highlights the differences among them.

This paper is a study of Walt Whitman's influence in England, Northern European countries, Southern Europe, Latin America, and other countries.

This thesis examines the reasons why Walt Whitman has been a "puzzle" to literary critics for well over a century. It shows the correspondence between Walt Whitman's work and the mystical tradition of East as also interpreted by American Transcendentalists. Enquiry into "self" is the central theme of most of Whitman's work. Two aspects of this enquiry have been investigated in this thesis and compared with the Upanishads: the development of self; and the use of contradictions as a means of conveying meaning. Both aspects support the view that Whitman displays a worldview not in accordance with the popular Western view in which God and man are entirely different and can never meet on equal terms. Whitman's view can be compared to that of the American Transcendentalists and Neoplatonists which finds a sympathetic chord in the native European tradition of humanistic values as well as in the Upanishads. Whitman works from a state of consciousness that is different in spirit and structure from the Hegelian dialectical principle which has wielded so much influence over Western thought. Whitman's poetry is remarkably akin to that of the Upanishadic writers in whose consciousness the subject and object have fused into one. Whitman is shown to draw his ideas from a depth of the human psyche that is often associated with Eastern thought but which is also present in the West. Four stances of self in Whitman's work have been identified which are seen to be related to, but not identical with, four states of consciousness in the Upanishads. The thesis concludes that not only is there a remarkable degree of correspondence between Walt Whitman and the Upanishads, both in respect to development of the self and use of contradictions, but that interpreting him in the light of the Upanishads provides another modern opportunity for meeting of the East and the West.

No description available.

This thesis discusses the symbolism found in Walt Whitman's second poetic period, as found in the collection Leaves of Grass.

This thesis will be an attempt to gather together the important ideas set forth in Whitman's early writing which are to be found also in Emerson's lectures, essays, and poems written before 1855. It will attempt to show what Whitman might have gained from Emerson if he had had no other source, and if a creative intellect had not the power of originating its own ideas.