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Notes on video lecture:
Walt Whitman and the City
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on February 10, 2014 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
commerce, Dostoevsky, carpenter, buskers, streets, cities, leisure, Lowell, transportation, ferry, populated, workers, completed
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only in the 19th century do the              we now live in begin to be built
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19th cities for the first time become larger and more                    than any person can easily know
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vast grids of               
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where many thousands of people live pressed in together
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the first buildings with 4,5, and 6 stories were beginning to be constructed
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how to fireproof them, make them accomodate unprecedented numbers of                and residents
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so large that modes of mass                              have to be developed
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Walt Whitman
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son of                   
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in his youth, he built these buildings
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came of age during one of the building booms in New York
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he watches a city come into being, his self-consciousness enhanced by the change he sees all around him
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like Dickens and                     , describing people move from mode of transportation to mode of transportation daily
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before the 19th century, no one took a            daily in order to go to work
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                 is exploding, goods from all over the world
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the explosion of print is making it possible for goods to be advertised
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material objects for sale
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city is crowded and colorful
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the poets              and Longfellow still writing about mythological characters
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reflections on objects of nature, trees, sunsets
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Whitman wrote about ferries, omnibuses, horse carts, half-                   buildings
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Whitman's city
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work and leisure flow into each other on every block, something we are used to now
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               entertaining, children playing
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workmen return to work sites
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the interpenetration of labor, commerce and               , no division between workplace and recreation place
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very stimulating to him, turning every workday into an event
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you are on your way to printing office and what a feast of images, what a concert of sounds
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your world is a show with hundreds of extras on hand
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fountains sparkle in sun, a mixture of spectacle and function

Vocabulary:

omnibus, n. a large horse-drawn vehicle with spring-suspension and obligatory ceiling where the driver sits on a separate, front-facing bench ⇒ "The earliest solution was a horse-drawn vehicle called an omnibus."
busker, n. a person who makes money by passing the hat to solicit donations while entertaining the public often by playing a musical instrument on the streets or in other public area such as a park or market. ⇒ "The man recorded several tunes without commercial success, worked at odd jobs, and took up busking along the piers and storefronts along the beach."

People:

######################### (1819-1891)
American Romantic poet who became involved in the movement to abolish slavery
  • one of the Fireside Poets
  • graduated from Harvard College in 1838
Walt Whitman and the City