Chapter 11 Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, the second child of Emily Norcross Dickinson and Edward Dickinson. Economically, politically, and intellectually, the Dickinsons was one of Amherst’s most prominent families. With her formal experimentation and bold thematic ambitions, Emily Dickinson is recognized as one of the greatest American poets, a poet who continues to exert an enormous influence on the way writers think about the possibilities of poetic craft and vocation. It is sometimes possible to extract autobiography from her poems, but she was not a confessional poet, rather, she used personae—invented first-person speakers—to dramatize the various situation, moods, and perspectives she explored to her lyrics. Though each of her poems is individually short, when collected in one volume, her nearly eighteen hundred surviving poems(she probably wrote hundreds more that were lost)have the feel of an epic produced by the one who devoted much of her life to art.
Critical Perspectives
1.Comparative Study
Marissa Grunes, in “Open Interiority: Emily Dickinson, Augustine, and the Spatial Self”, focuses on paradoxes, doubling, and fragmentation of the self in Emily Dickinson’s poetry have given rise to significant debate within Dickinson criticism. It mentions secular view of her self-division is plagued by charges of anachronism and speculative analysis and influence embraces both secular and spiritual traditions of self division and self-discovery. It also mentions spatial paradox and architectural metaphors of Augustine’s writing and limits of language.[1]
2.New Historicism
Midori Asahina, in “Reconsidering Mabel Loomis Todd’s Role in Promoting Emily Dickinson’s Writings”, focuses on reconsideration of the role of Mabel Loomis Todd in promoting the writings of poet Emily Dickinson and contains poems with no original manuscripts extant. It mentions editorial amity between Susan Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd and their partisans and bindings of important units of the poems called fascicles as a part of creative editing. It also mentions Todd recognized her artistry and worked to promote appreciation of the poet.[2]
Neil Soderstrom, in “A Poet’s GIFTS”, discusses the restoration of American poet Emily Dickinson’s conservatory that offers new perspective on her daily life and creative process. It mentions the addition of The Evergreens house and The Homestead contingent as part of the Emily Dickinson Museum, which occupies north of Main Street and includes the family orchard and gardens. The identification of Daphne odora and jasmine among the favorites of Dickinson as they were among the first to bloom in winter is also tackled.[3]
Jason Hoppe, in “Personality and Poetic Election in the Preceptual Relationship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1862-1886”, presents on the preceptual relationship of poet Emily Dickinson with author Thomas Wentworth Higginson. This relationship is reflected in Dickinson’s letters to Higginson and the poem Image of Light. Jason examines the absence of an elaboration of the preceptor’s knowledge of the scholar’s course of study. He claims that their relationship supposes the inseparability of literary endeavor from a manner of micro social intercourse.[4]
3.Canonization Study
Claire Nashar, in “Their Conceptual Dickinson: Emily Dickinson in the Work of Tan Lin and a.j. carruthers”, focuses on popularity of poetic avant-garde of poet Emily Dickinson and exceptional formal inventiveness and intellectual vibrancy of her poems. Topics discussed include concerns of contemporary conceptual poetics with mutability of genre, and textual consumption, self-theorized movement in early twenty-first-century Anglophone poetics and optical character recognition (OCR) technology into machine-encoded text.[5]
4.Philosophical Study
Yanbin Kang, in “Dickinson’s Air/Wind: ‘Lonesome Glee’ and Poetics of Emptiness”, highlights work of an American poet Emily Dickinson’s part of a long meditative tradition, and investigates how her poetics of emptiness is marked by a negative tendency that resonates with Daoism and Chan Buddhism. Topics discussed include Dickinson’s poetics of emptiness derives from an image cluster that has the air and wind as a basis, and linking with her efforts to celebrate meditation.[6]
Glenn Hughes, in “Love, Terror, and Transcendence in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry”, argues that the profound appreciation of transcendence by poet Emily Dickinson that guides her lifelong spiritual quest. Topics covered include the experiences of mental pain and torture in her poems, the spiritual explorations detailed in her poetry manifest a struggle and strong aversion to many core tenets of the Christian religion, and her religious life and personality which is expressed in her poetry.[7]
5.New Criticism
Mustafa Zeki Cirakli, in “The Language of Paradox in the Ironic Poetry of Emily Dickinson”, argues that Emily Dickinson’s poetry is characterized by her emphasis on ironic use of discourse that amounts to her persistent manifestation of individuality against hypocrisy and vanity. She exerts her peculiar poetic language in a way that helps deplore as well as explore the paradoxical human condition. This paper argues that Dickinson produces a language of poetry, which, in Cleanth Brooks’ terms, provides the reader with the “language of paradox”. Dickinson’s ironic poetry exemplifies Brooks’ idea that ironic poetry is self-conscious and satiric in nature and is made up of a language of paradox. The study, therefore, aims to reveal how the language of paradox in Dickinson’s poetry yields to irony which is primarily associated with her salient assertiveness, isolation and strong individuality.[8]
6.Psychoanalytical Criticism
Peter Boxall, in “Blind Seeing: Deathwriting from Dickinson to the Contemporary”, traces a tradition of what is here called “deathwriting” as it stretches from Emily Dickinson, to Franz Kafka, to Samuel Beckett, to Cormac McCarthy. The work of all these writers, the essay argues, is driven by the urge to give a poetic form to the experience of death, to make death thinkable and narratable. Alongside this tradition of deathwriting, and interwoven with it, one can discern too, a fascination with “blind seeing”, an attempt to make darkness visible, or to overcome the distinction between the light and the dark, the visible and the invisible. In reading the connection between deathwriting and blind seeing as it runs from Dickinson to the contemporary, the essay argues that these writers allow us to glimpse a differently constituted relationship between the living and the dead, and between the perceptible and the imperceptible. At a contemporary moment when it has become urgent to rethink our apparatuses for world picturing, with the emergence of the Anthropocene as a critical context for all of our imaginings, the essay offers this history of deathwriting as a radically different way of seeing, without the aid of human light.[9]
Simon du Plock, in “Emily Dickinson: Metaphorical Spaces and the Divided Self”, argues that the life and work of the mid-19th century poet Emily Dickinson has attracted considerable attention in recent years from literary critics, biographers, and contemporary poets on both sides of the Atlantic. Simon suggests a number of possible reasons for renewed interest in this reclusive, intensive writer. He makes a case (with reference to her seminal work) for her particular significance to modern psychology, and especially to my own discipline of existential-phenomenological therapy. He also argues that her unique contribution is grounded in her attempts, via what may be thought of as “a philosophical and philological probing”, to chart the metaphorical architecture of the brain, and to describe the experience of being a “divided self”—of fragmentation or splitting of the mind.[10]
Carol J. Cook, in “Emily Dickinson: Poet as Pastoral Theologian”, argues that—mystic, rebel, recluse, genius, skeptic, poet, pastoral theologian? Who was Emily Dickinson? Among other descriptors, Dickinson (1830-1886) was a complex 19th century woman who possessed great intellectual and poetic gifts, whose life and work retains tantalizing mysteries, and who can be considered a fascinating “woman out of order” in her time and still in ours (Stevenson-Moessner ＆ Snorton). Immersing oneself in the stories that continue to spin around her life and ongoing discussion about the meaning of her poems can be a rewarding, inspiring adventure, and in what follows, Carol attempts to show how at least some of her poems can be considered artistic expressions of pastoral theology.[11]
Seth Archer, in “ I Had a Terror: Emily Dickinson’s Demon”, examines what it calls the mental illness of poet Emily Dickinson through her poetry and through Seth’s own experience of a similar condition. Dickinson’s poem I Had a Terror is interpreted as referring to a panic attack. Seth describes his own panic attack and points out that because of modern psychopharmacology he is able to live a normal life. Without the medication, he says, he would have to live a life of seclusion similar to Dickinson’s.[12]
Linda Freedman, in “And with What Body Do They Come?”: Dickinson’s Resurrection”, presents how poet Emily Dickinson’s sense of theology and poetry shared common ground, but it does not pretend to declare a truce between religion and literature, reference to her several poems and the sense of irrecoverable loss which is carried by Dickinson’s sensitivity to mourning and bereavement in her poetry.[13](https://www.daowen.com)
7.Narratology Study
William Logan, in “Dickinson’s Nerves”, examines American poet Emily Dickinson’s writing style. Topics include the use of “I” to start numerous poems, reversals, the dramatics of meter, rhythm, metaphors, and syntax. Also analyzed are the differences in the rules of engagement of various languages, punctuation, and several of Dickinson’s poems. These poems include The Winter’s Tale and I felt a Funeral.[14]
8.Thematic Study
Patsy J. Daniels, in “ The Gap in Emily Dickinson’s Consciousness: Buddhism in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry”, argues that Emily Dickinson’s poetry is associated with Buddhist thought in many ways. A connection may be made between her seclusion and eastern practices. Seclusion offered the opportunity for her to explore her mind. She describes her inner life in her poetry, and her descriptions sound much like descriptions of meditative states. The Transcendentalists influenced her, and her poetry is also associated with Buddhist thought in many other ways. Thus, the Transcendentalists looked east for their inspiration, and she looked even further. Her inner life is reflected in her poems, as descriptions of meditative states.[15]
【注释】
[1]Grunes M. “Open Interiority: Emily Dickinson, Augustine, and the Spatial Self”. Women’s Studies, 2018, 47(3):350-371.
[2]Asahina M. “Reconsidering Mabel Loomis Todd’s Role in Promoting Emily Dickinson’s Writings”. Women’s Studies, 2018, 47(3):302-316.
[3]Soderstrom N. “A Poet’s GIFTS”. Horticulture, 2018, 115(1):46-51.
[4]Hoppe J. “Personality and Poetic Election in the Preceptual Relationship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1862-1886”. Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 2013, 55(3):348-387.
[5]Nashar C. “Their Conceptual Dickinson: Emily Dickinson in the Work of Tan Lin and a.j. carruthers”. Women’s Studies, 2018, 47(3):263-285.
[6]Kang Y. “Dickinson’s Air/Wind: ‘Lonesome Glee’ and Poetics of Emptiness”. Renascence, 2018, 70(4):273-295.
[7]Hughes G. “Love, Terror, and Transcendence in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry”. Renascence, 2014, 66(4):283-304.
[8]Cirakli M Z. “The Language of Paradox in the Ironic Poetry of Emily Dickinson”. Journal of History, Culture and Art Research. 2015, 4(2):24-38.
[9]Boxall P. “Blind Seeing: Deathwriting from Dickinson to the Contemporary”. New Formations, 2017(89/90):192-211.
[10]Du Plock S. “Emily Dickinson: Metaphorical Spaces and the Divided Self”. Existential Analysis, 2013, 24(2):268-280.
[11]Cook C J. “Emily Dickinson: Poet as Pastoral Theologian”. Pastoral Psychology, 2011, 60(3):421-435.
[12]Archer S. “I Had a Terror: Emily Dickinson’s Demon”. Southwest Review, 2009, 94(2):255-273.
[13]Freedman L. “‘And with What Body Do They Come?’: Dickinson’s Resurrection”. Religion ＆ Literature, 2014, 46(1):180-187.
[14]Logan W. “Dickinson’s Nerves”. Hudson Review, 2017, 69(4):541-577.
[15]Daniels P J. “The Gap in Emily Dickinson’s Consciousness: Buddhism in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry”. Jackson State University Researcher, 2007/2008, 21(3):1-31.