emily dickinson and her poems emily dickinson (1830-1886)
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Emily Dickinson and her Poems
Emily Dickinson’s life (1830-1886)
• Homestead, Amherst, Massachusetts• Close friends: Austin (brother), Lavinia (sister), Susan• Education: Amherst Academy 1840-1846 Mt. Holyoke
Female Seminary 1847-1848• Brief visits to Washington & Philadelphia in Feb-Mar,
1855• Eye treatments at Cambridge in Apr.-Nov. 1864, Apr-
Oct, 1865• Masters / Preceptors / Lovers?• Desire to become a published poet?• Seclusion late in life (recluse)
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
Religion
• Calvinistic influence: Amherst College vs. Harvard & Yale
• Terrorized by threatening sermons about damnation
• Terror diminished (esp. after 1852)• Triumph over religious fears• Doubt & faith: doubts about fulfillment
beyond the grave; belief in immortality
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
Death Experience
• High infant and childhood mortality, high mortality in childbirth
• High mortality in general: death of neighbors and friends, other deaths
• Death of her 8-year-old nephew Gilbert
• Deaths of aunt, uncle, father, mother
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
Topics for Discussion
• Dickinson’s unique style and language• relationship between nature and humans• concept of love• concept of death• exploration of the mind / psyche• view of women’s life / position in society
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
Features of Dickinson’s Poetry
• Form
• Subject
• Image
• Rhetorical device
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
Meters and Stanzas
• familiar meters, stanzas
- hymn stanza: quatrain of alternating lines of tetrameter and trimeter with lines 2 and 4 rhymed (214)
• irregular meters and stanzas (67, 249)
• occasional “slant” rhymes: today victory (67); true throe; feign strung (241); one stone (303)
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
• Frequent use of
- capitalization
- dash
- exclamation point
- enjambment (跳行,跨行) “It lay unmentioned – as the Sea
Develop Pearl, and the Weed,” (732)
- inverted order
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
Subject
• life, death, love, nature, time, eternity
• inner/psychic world
- soul: 303, 396, 512, 974, 997
- suffering: pain, agony, anguish, grief, sorrow, despair, fear (49, 67, 241, 252, 280, 341, 465)
- joy, ecstasy, transport, passion, desire of freedom (214, 249, 640, 754)
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
Image
• Original: 241
• Peculiar: 49
• Striking: 214, 341
• cognitively difficult:
585, 986
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
Rhetorical device
• Metaphor: ever present in D’s poems
• Irony: 712, 732, 1624 (blonde assassin)
• Contrast: 67, 252, 579
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
Nature Theme
• Identification with Nature: its spiritual refreshment, liveliness, beauty to be appreciated (214)
• Alienation from Nature: its essence is baffling, elusive and destructive (258, 328, 986, 1624)
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
Death Theme
• Death as a possible extinction 547
• Question of whether the soul survives death, whether there is immortality, Heaven 465, 640, 712
• Spiritual death 280, 341
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
I heard a Fly buzz(465)
• Contrast of Stillness & fly’s Buzz
Tension: pauses within a storm
• King – death
• Willed my keepsakes – ready for death
• Blue & Buzz: color & sound
• Uncertain: fly’s motion, her state of mind
• Fly – the moment of death & the precious world she is leaving
• Windows failed –unwilling to admit her eyes’ failure
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
Because I could not stop for Death(712)
• Kindly, civility – irony
• Chill – death’s freezing effect
• Flat roof – swift dissolution
• 3 interpretations – paradise, destruction, open ending
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
There’s a certain Slant of light(258)
• Paradoxes: cathedral, Heavenly hurt, Seal Despair
• Both elevating and destructive qualities of nature
• Experience beyond normal experience
- extreme despair
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
Love Theme
• 249, 273 & 754
- Expression of passionate love: love is everything
• 640
- pain as caused by love
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
I cannot live with you(640)
• Paradox: a beloved man from whom she is permanently separated in life; the love she is devoted to separates her from the man she loves
• Lover is like God, superior to heaven
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
Adrienne Rich
• Persona of masculine power 754, 315
• Exploration deep in the soul: ecstasy, passion, despair, pain
258, 280, 315, 341
Emily Dickinson and her Poems
View of woman’s life / position in society
• 401: satire of gentlewomen’s vanity and pretension
• 640: dedicated more to love than to husband’s religious belief
• 732: woman’s sacrifice in marriage of their “abundance / awe / pearl”
• 1176
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