SOURCE: "Whitman and the Homosexual Republic," in Walt Whitman: The Centennial Essays, edited by Ed Folsom, University of Iowa Press, 1994, pp. 153-71.
In the following essay, Erkkila maintains that critics who focus on the centrality of sexuality, and particularly homosexuality, in Whitman's work typically distinguish between the private and public Whitman, and between the themes of homosexuality and democracy. Erkkila argues against this reading, stressing instead the relationship, rather than the distinction, between homosexuality and democracy in Whitman's poetry.
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