「나 자신의 노래」에 나타난 휘트먼의 대화적 상상력

Whitman's Dialogical Imagination in "Song of Myself"

This paper attempts to show that Whitman's greatest and longest poem, "Song of Myself," can be viewed in terms of M. M. Bakhtin's dialogic imagination. Whitman reveals his sense of dialogical imagination by adopting the poet-reader relationship throughout the poem. Whitman's dialogical imagination, which is well compared with that of Bakhtin's, is embodied by the conversational style between the poet and the reader. Whitman's sense of the reader's role and sense of multi-voicedness or polyphony, and his concept openness and inclusiveness are all similar to Bakhtin's dialogical imagination. Whitman adopts many different poetic speakers in "Song of Myself," such as : the poet himself, a teacher, Christ, an evolutionist, a barbarian, a lover of nature, etc. Whitman's poetic speakers of many voices not only show his poetic principles but also show the various phenomena of both man and nature. Reading Whitman's "Song of Myself" in terms of dialogical imagination can help to properly understand an otherwise enigmatic poem, because of its loose structure.