After the 'Spring of '59': Dante's Inferno in the 1860 Leaves of Grass

<p>In this thesis, I will present evidence from the works of Walt Whitman to suggest he implemented his reading of Dante Alighieri’s <i>Inferno </i>seven years earlier than current scholarship believes and that he used explicitly Dantean words in <i>Leaves of Grass</i>. While American-Literature studies have noted that Whitman read, and greatly admired, Dante, they have, to this point, focused on later editions of <i>Leaves of Grass</i>; specifically, that of 1867 and the <i>Drum-Taps </i>sequence, inspired by the sights and horrors of the American Civil War, which Whitman served in as a nurse. Neglected is Dante’s presence in the earlier, 1860 edition of <i>Leaves of Grass</i>, which followed his initial, 1859 reading of the <i>Inferno</i>. Both implicitly and explicitly, Whitman used Dante’s own words to both enrich his poetry and cement his position as the great American bard.</p>