Lecture 7 Emily Dickinson.ppt

Emily Dickinson (1830 ~ 1886) Biography 1. born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a family well known for educational and political activity 2. educated at Amherst Academy (1834-47) and Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (1847-48) 3. After the Civil War Dickinson restricted her contacts outside Amherst to exchange of letters, and settled down to a normal New England village life. 4. After Dickinsons death in 1886, her sister Lavinia brought out her poems, while in her entire lifetime, only 7 out of all the 1775 poems were published. 5. 1955 edition of Emily Dickinsons poems finally gave readers a complete and accurate text. Development of Her Literary Career 1. Calvinism with its doctrine of predestination and its pessimism pressured her during her childhood and adolescence and colored her work so that her basic tone was tragic. 2. Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Samuel Bowles did the “surgery” to her published work. 3. The loss of her “tutors”: Benjamin Newton (1853) and Charles Wadsworth (1862); “bereft” twice: My life closed twice before its close 4. 1914: more poems coming to light, fame established 5. 1950: Harvard University bought all her copyright; she was “rediscovered” in a new century Themes of Her Poems 1. Death Immortality: one third of her poems 2. Love: never imitating others, unique 3. Nature: both gaily benevolent and cruel 4. Science: it will not trust us with another world; it can never destroy the mystery of nature 5. Ethics: free will and human responsibility; renunciation of anything low or hostile to man’s spiritual heritage and self-respect 6. Attacks against over-emphasis on materialism and commercialism, while warm response to the expansion of America 7. Fame: If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her. Her Poetic Techniques A Courageous Experimentalist 1. Concrete images of an inspired thought 2. Severe economy of expression 3. Laconic brevity, directness, and plainest words 4. A precursor of the Imagist movement