ENG250Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Free Verse, Simile
Document Summary
Set in wall street but there are actually literal walls around people, people are isolated. The difficulties of societies that privilege individualism what makes the us a united nation instead of a nation comprised of individual, separate states, where there is no togetherness. Copyists: people that are supposed to do what they are told to do, people that copy other people however bartleby not only refused to do this job but also be this person. He"s not going to assume what the lawyer assumes (relates to whitman) How does society deal with non-conformists? (they go to jail, they are shunned, they become an outsider) To be a typical american you express your dissent and anger about the status quo in america. Dickinson and whitman represent two very different themes of 19th century society. They were both radicals; they challenge late victorian formalism, flowery language, american culture. They offer alternative poetic radicalism with very different aesthetics opposing each other.
