SOURCE: “Whitman's ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd,’” in Textual Analysis: Some Readers Reading, edited by Mary Anne Caws, The Modern Langauge Association of America, 1986, pp. 132-43.
In the following essay, Vendler examines the various influences on Whitman's style in his “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd” and stresses his “de-Christianizing” of the elegy form.
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Read the rest of this Criticism with our Death in American Literature: Critical Essay by Helen Vendler Access Pass.
