Use these questions as the basis to investigate the materials on this site and explore further resources.

1. Based on your readings of the elegiac illustrations on this site, what characterizes an elegy as a poem? What is the difference between a formal elegy and an elegiac tone in a poem? What other poems have you read that would make an effective elegiac illustration? Why might the Civil War have created new possibilities for the elegy? Speculate on how Whitman and Dickinson reworked the elegiac tradition in light of their direct or indirect experiences with the war.

2. How do the myths of Orpheus and Eurydice and Achilles and Patroclus? How do these myths figure in the poetry of Whitman and Dickinson?

3. What homoerotic strains in the history of the elegy figure in the elegies of Whitman and Dickinson? What are the similarities and differences between the poets?

4. Why was Abraham Lincoln such an important figure to Whitman? What generalizations can you make about his attitudes toward Lincoln? What did the assassination mean to him? How does Whitman’s poetic portraits of Lincoln compare to other accounts that you have read? How does it compare to the poems by Herman Melville, Jones Very, Thomas Bailey Aldrich and others?

5. Based on your reading of Whitman’s lecture on the “Death of Abraham Lincoln,” his journal entry on the death of Whitman, and your reading of “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” what words, phrase, and images are used in all the works? Can you trace a compositional process at work?

6. Specimen Days is Whitman’s prose autobiography, collection of war memoranda, and includes part of a diary and notes on nature. Whitman called it a “wayward” book because he composed it from letters, journals, notebooks, and diaries. What do you learn about Whitman’s perspective on the Civil War? What are his impressions of specific battles, such as the Battle of Bull Run? How does his historical account compare to other accounts that you can locate? Construct a timeline of Whitman's direct experiences with the war, based on the print and electronic resources listed in the Bibliography.

7. Whitman said that “the real war will never get in the books.” In what ways do both Whitman and Dickinson inscribe the war in their poems? Why was the Civil War a particularly painful experience for Whitman and Dickinson? How did contemporary news accounts and images of the war, as recorded by Matthew Brady and other early photographers shape public and private responses to the war?

8. Both Whitman and Dickinson were well read in English poetry and knew the elegies of Milton, Shelley, and Tennyson. In what ways do you see the British elegiac tradition at work in the their poems? What specific conventions, themes, and images are similar?

9. Based on your reading of Dickinson’s letters to Louise and Frances Norcross and your readings of "It feels a shame to be alive -" (FP#243) and "When I was small, a Woman died -" (FP#518), what influence did the deaths of Sylvester Adams in 1861 and Frazer Stearns in 1862 have on Dickinson? Construct a timeline of the events of the war in these years by investigating some of the print and electronic resources given in the Bibliography. How do these war deaths touch her and shape her poetic response? Would call these poems elegies? Why or why not?

10. Elegies on the deaths of children represent an important category of elegiac poetry in the nineteenth century. Emerson’s “Threnody” on the death of his son and Lydia Sigourney’s elegy on the death of her son are just two examples, and both Whitman and Dickinson probably knew both these poems. In what ways do Whitman and Dickinson use the deaths of children (or young persons) in their poems? How do their techniques compare with those of their contemporaries?

11. How do the letters to Higginson from Dickinson present her concerns about the Civil War? What historical information can you find about the circumstances of Higginson’s participation in the war?

12. During a turbulent time in the Civil War in late 1862, Higginson wrote and published “Procession of Flowers.” What is the theme of this essay? Is there an elegiac tone that you can trace through this essay? How does the tone compare with tones and themes in Dickinson’s poems during this period, especially "The Soul unto itself" (OMC 86), "'Tis good - the looking back on Grief -" FP#472), and "As imperceptively as Grief" (FP#935)?