Mystical Discourse in Wordsworth and Whitman: A Transatlantic Bridge

In Mystical Discourse D.J. Moores builds on the work of current transatlantic scholarship in a lucid analysis of the connections between William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman. As he demonstrates, the transatlantic bridge between both poets lies in their privileging of a type of mystical language he calls cosmic rhetoric, which served the function of ideological resistance, as it enabled them to rebel against Enlightenment modes of thinking and being. In a thorough engagement with the work of Wordsworth and Whitman, Moores shows that the cosmic rhetoric of both writers involves a subversive reorientation towards self and society, nature and God, and knowledge and religion, as well as a radical revisioning of language and poetics.