The Verbalization of Social Views in Walt Whitman’s Poetry

Abstract

This article examines one of the most effective ways of disseminating socialist thought in Anglo-Saxon countries, unexplored in historiography, with the help of the poetic heritage of the American poet Walt Whitman. For the first time, the writer’s works are assessed as an original source used as a communication channel in promoting the basic values of a socially just society. And although Whitman did not consider himself a convinced socialist, it was his poetry that sensitively responding to socio-economic and spiritual-moral upheavals in the life of society, it became a kind of ideological banner of the socialist movement in the Anglo-Saxon countries at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. Whitman's poetic word, which relied on radical appeals and emotional perception, had a more convincing effect on participants in mass democratic movements. The poet's talent to express his thoughts clearly and speak in an accessible language contributed to the popularization of the ideals of socialism among the broad masses.