Clustering of cognitive biases in Walt Whitman’s ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry’: An Ecocritical Analysis

Abstract

Walt Whitman's 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry' (CBF) (1856) conveys and constructs an exhilarated passenger's experience with public transportation facilities of mid-nineteenth century New York against the background of modernization, urbanization, industrialization and globalization. With Whitman's America exploiting the continent's diverse resources along imperialist lines, CBF exposes the poet's implication in the early stages of the climate crisis. This article draws on scientific insights into human cognition to furnish a productive interpretative lens for analysing poetry and its role in human relationships with the more-than-human world. Exploring culturally adapted cognitive features relevant to the perception of time and scale in the context of ongoing planetary disruption, it argues that Whitman's attitude towards the future anticipates major issues in presentday environmental (in)action.