Ciencia y mito en la poesía épica del siglo XIX: <i>Leaves of Grass</i> de Walt Whitman y <i>O Guesa</i> de Joaquim de Sousândrade

Abstract

This essay reads and confronts the poems Leaves of Grass (1855-1892) by Walt Whitman and O Guesa (1868-1902) by Joaquim de Sousândrade, aiming to think two questiones: the textual genre (in this case, the modern epic poetry) and the time or the epoch which is being narrated on them (their nineteenth centuries, differents a lot, but in the “same” America). The reading is focused in the relation among the poems and the science (the last as the father of poetry or the murder of the world) and in the theme of the crowd in modern cities and the consequent control applied by the State. The poems conduce to the elaboration of an essential problem concerning to the epos: that of being the scripture of the myth or the scripture about the myth.