Weaving History: A New Historicist Dialogue on Power, Anxiety, and Spider Imagery in Whitman and Yuan Mei

Abstract

This study aims to examine the spider imagery in Walt Whitman’s and Yuan Mei’s poetry through a New Historicist lens. It reveals the role this imagery plays in a cross-cultural dialogue on power and anxiety. By integrating Foucault’s “power discourse”, Greenblatt’s “cultural negotiation” and Althusser’s “symptomatic reading”, the analysis proceeds from imagistic essence to strategic deployment and finally to structural metaphor. At the level of imagistic essence, Whitman’s spider condenses the spiritual symbol of an expansive, foundational self in early America, while Yuan Mei’s spider, through its operation of a “selective web”, reveals the pragmatic, calculating nature of power within the peak of Qing Dynasty. At the level of textual dialogue, Whitman’s constructive poetics actively participates in shaping an emerging national mythology, whereas Yuan Mei’s deconstructive irony deftly punctures the latent rules and unspoken compromises of the proclaimed prosperous age. At the level of power structure, the “radially expansive” power metaphor embodied by Whitman’s spider reflects a distinct modern “anxiety of blankness”, while the “centripetally selective” power mapped by Yuan Mei’s spider corresponds to the late imperial “anxiety of density”. Together, they demonstrate how poetic imagery, by engaging in the negotiation and articulation of contemporary power discourses, vividly substantiates the core New Historicist claim that “the text is a historical presence”, acting not as a mirror but as an agent within the force field of history.