Knut Hamsun, America and Walt Whitman: On the Use of Literary Criticism as Self-Optimization

Eirik Vassenden

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Chapter 5 Knut Hamsun, America and Walt Whitman: On the Use of Literary Criticism as Self-Optimization

In: Self-Optimization in Modernist Culture

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Eirik Vassenden

Eirik Vassenden
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 112–132

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004720701_007

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Abstract

This chapter explores Knut Hamsun’s use of literary criticism as a means of self-optimization, with a particular focus on his aggressive critique of Walt Whitman. Recognized as a skilled media strategist and caricatured as a Norwegian Barnum, Hamsun employed criticism to distinguish himself from other authors and to shape his own literary program. In his 1889 pamphlet The Cultural Life of Modern America, Hamsun dismisses Whitman’s poetry as “primitive” and “uncivilized,” despite striking similarities between himself and the American writer. This chapter contends that Hamsun’s critique of Whitman should not be regarded merely as strategic positioning, but also as part of a process of self-optimization, where Hamsun assimilates and rejects elements of Whitman’s work in order to refine his poetics and his public persona.

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Self-Optimization in Modernist Culture

Series: Literary Modernism, Volume: 9

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004720701

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 03 Jun 2025

Subjects
- Literature and Cultural Studies

Front Matter

Part 1 The Self

Part 2 Emotions and Nerves

Part 3 Body and Gender

Part 4 The Technology of Self-Optimization

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Chapter 5 Knut Hamsun, America and Walt Whitman: On the Use of Literary Criticism as Self-Optimization

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Self-Optimization in Modernist Culture

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