American Literary Masters:Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson1830-1886

Born 1830 in Amherst, MAGrandfather founded Amherst

College (where she attended)Known as reclusive/private; most of

her work crafted in the form of letters/ correspondence written from homeED ‘The woman in white’

“A solemn thing – it was – I said –A Woman – White – to be –And wear – if God should count me fit –Her blameless mystery –” (Dickinson,

1861)

Emily Dickinson: Biography

Despite her prolific writing, fewer than a dozen poems were published in her lifetime

She died in 1886 (age = 55)Younger sister Lavinia discovered the

collection of nearly eighteen hundred poems

Dickinson's first volume was published four years after her death.

First official anthology 1955 publication of Dickinson's Complete Poems by Thomas H. Johnson

Emily Dickinson: Biography

Dickinson’s literary influences:Emily Dickinson: Influences

William WordsworthRalph Waldo EmersonHenry Wadsworth Longfellow

(Kavanagh)Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre)William Shakespeare (Othello;

King Lear; Hamlet)

Dickinson’s Poetry: PeriodsEmily Dickinson: Periods

Dickinson’s poems generally fall into three distinct periods, the works in each period having certain general characters in common:Pre-1861

Conventional and sentimental in nature

1861-1865Vigorous, creative and emotionally

drivenThemes of life and death

Post-1866

Dickinson’s Poetry: StyleEmily Dickinson: Style

Syntax:Extensive use of dashesUnconventional capitalizationIdiosyncratic vocabulary and imageryUse of paradox (self-defeating truth)

Structure:Opted for trimeter and tetrameter;

avoided pentameterEmployed ballad stanza; quatrainsABCB rhyme scheme; slant rhymeResonances fit to melodies of folk songs

and hymns

Dickinson’s Poetry: Major ThemesEmily Dickinson: Themes

Flowers and gardens One of Dickinson’s greatest passions was

botany; saw gardens as “imaginative realms” and their flowers as “emblems for action”

The Master poems Confessional poetry addressed to “Signor”/“Sir”

Morbidity Fascination with illness, dying and death

Gospel poems Preoccupation with the teachings of Jesus Christ

The Undiscovered Continent Dickinson saw the mind and spirit as tangible,

visitable place

Emily Dickinson: Quotes

“My friends are my estate.”“A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.”“Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.”“Saying nothing…sometimes says the most.”“A wounded deer leaps the highest.”“To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”“People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.”“I dwell in possibility.”