Walt Whitman as a Critic of Literature

For this study 1 have made use of the libraries of the Uni-versity of Nebraska, the University of Chicago, and the private library of Dr. Louise Pound. It was Dr. Pound who suggested that I might enjoy working with Walt Whitman's criticism of literature; who read the manuscript; and who accepted the finished essay as partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Master's degree. There has been no full-length portrait of Whitman as a literary critic. The nearest approach is Norman Foerster's chapter on Whitman in his American Criticism, an argument for humanistic philosophy in literatcre. But Professor Foerster has made no attempt at exhausting the material, and he pro-vides little documentation. The present study, tentative and incomplete as it is, at least makes accessible Whitman's most meaningful judgments on literature. My task has been one o