Beginning with T.W. Higginson, the poet’s first public critic and posthumous editor, the prevailing view of Emily Dickinson has been of a maker of “wonderful strokes and felicities, and yet an incomplete and unsatisfactory whole,” a view that is often based on her perceived strangeness as a person. More recently, Virginia Jackson has advanced the view of Dickinson’s poetry as being poorly served by modern methods of practical criticism, “dependent on their artifactual contexts” and on thoughts “too intimate for print.” Unabashedly practical in its approach, this thesis argues that the general shape of Dickinson’s life reveals her writings as the product of her personal quest for growth, and that, further, her reclusive habits reflect this quest. Dickinson’s removal from the ordinary modes of life in her town parallels Henry David Thoreau’s more transient life in the woods. No less than Thoreau, Dickinson wished “to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life,” but the combined pressures of gender and social situation placed restrictions on how Dickinson might do so as a woman. Yet while she did not take up an abode in the woods, Dickinson’s home life enabled her to live in the manner of the woods—a symbol of inexhaustible diversity in the poet’s imagination, and an endless source of significance beyond her conscious will. The title of the study hints at the mode of life the poet associates with this uncharted, enchanted place. The Introduction uses Dickinson’s early letters to Higginson to trace out her project as a poet in light of mid-nineteenth century critical principles. It shows how the poet repeatedly draws a distinction between herself as a person and herself as a poet, and how the theory of organic form which was dominant in her time helps to clarify her aesthetic achievements, while it also offers an explanation of why she never sought to publish her works. The main argument of this thesis is composed of two parts. Part I is composed of three chapters, all of which concern challenges posed by Dickinson’s writing. The first chapter considers several significant aspects of Dickinson’s autograph manuscripts, rejecting the materialist theories of some recent writers on the subject while also considering what the manuscripts tell us about the poet on the page. The second and third chapters explore the main purpose of Dickinson’s non-verbal notation, her use of non-standard conventions of orthography and punctuation (including capitalisation), and also her use of line breaks. Part II is also composed of three chapters, each of which focuses on distinct topics to offer new perspectives on Dickinson’s poems. The fourth chapter examines several poems in light of the tradition of natural visionary wisdom that flourished in New England in Dickinson’s time. The fifth chapter applies the literary conception of paradox to several of Dickinson’s more challenging poems, showing how the mode of paradox allows her to grasp the fuller sense of experience. The subject of the last chapter is death, immortality, and the “Immortality” the poet associates with enchanted earthly experience. The Conclusion describes an important function of Dickinson’s poetry—it offers to make us conscious of what is strange, wonderful, and unknowable in the world. A few prospects for the next stage of the study are also described.

Beginning with T.W. Higginson, the poet’s first public critic and posthumous editor, the prevailing view of Emily Dickinson has been of a maker of “wonderful strokes and felicities, and yet an incomplete and unsatisfactory whole,” a view that is often based on her perceived strangeness as a person. More recently, Virginia Jackson has advanced the view of Dickinson’s poetry as being poorly served by modern methods of practical criticism, “dependent on their artifactual contexts” and on thoughts “too intimate for print.” Unabashedly practical in its approach, this thesis argues that the general shape of Dickinson’s life reveals her writings as the product of her personal quest for growth, and that, further, her reclusive habits reflect this quest. Dickinson’s removal from the ordinary modes of life in her town parallels Henry David Thoreau’s more transient life in the woods. No less than Thoreau, Dickinson wished “to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life,” but the combined pressures of gender and social situation placed restrictions on how Dickinson might do so as a woman. Yet while she did not take up an abode in the woods, Dickinson’s home life enabled her to live in the manner of the woods—a symbol of inexhaustible diversity in the poet’s imagination, and an endless source of significance beyond her conscious will. The title of the study hints at the mode of life the poet associates with this uncharted, enchanted place. The Introduction uses Dickinson’s early letters to Higginson to trace out her project as a poet in light of mid-nineteenth century critical principles. It shows how the poet repeatedly draws a distinction between herself as a person and herself as a poet, and how the theory of organic form which was dominant in her time helps to clarify her aesthetic achievements, while it also offers an explanation of why she never sought to publish her works. The main argument of this thesis is composed of two parts. Part I is composed of three chapters, all of which concern challenges posed by Dickinson’s writing. The first chapter considers several significant aspects of Dickinson’s autograph manuscripts, rejecting the materialist theories of some recent writers on the subject while also considering what the manuscripts tell us about the poet on the page. The second and third chapters explore the main purpose of Dickinson’s non-verbal notation, her use of non-standard conventions of orthography and punctuation (including capitalisation), and also her use of line breaks. Part II is also composed of three chapters, each of which focuses on distinct topics to offer new perspectives on Dickinson’s poems. The fourth chapter examines several poems in light of the tradition of natural visionary wisdom that flourished in New England in Dickinson’s time. The fifth chapter applies the literary conception of paradox to several of Dickinson’s more challenging poems, showing how the mode of paradox allows her to grasp the fuller sense of experience. The subject of the last chapter is death, immortality, and the “Immortality” the poet associates with enchanted earthly experience. The Conclusion describes an important function of Dickinson’s poetry—it offers to make us conscious of what is strange, wonderful, and unknowable in the world. A few prospects for the next stage of the study are also described.

The province of this paper, therefore, is to reveal Emily Dickinson's concept of God which resulted from her personal confinement and subsequent delving as a "solitary dissenter."

This thesis is concerned with systematically investigating the relationship between Emily Dickinson's many personal tragedies and the crisis poems which grew out of them. Its basic organization is formed by discussing specific periods of her life in each chapter.

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This essay stresses the importance of the visual and material aspects of these manuscripts. By examining her work in relation to collage practices, it highlights Dickinson's role as an avant-garde figure in both American poetry and material culture. Rather than write interlocking theses that connect each reading, I aim to demonstrate the ways in which an art historical consideration of Dickinson's envelope manuscripts complicates the already open-ended nature of her poetry through associating the texts with the cultural phenomena of the scrapbook. Additionally, I will foreground the importance of the materiality of these works through emphasizing the role of correspondence in Dickinson's life.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T18:37:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo8283_1.pdf: 1199432 bytes, checksum: b3226ecbf790b659bcae6df5a32710fb (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2004 / Esta dissertação aborda a leitura e interpretação da obra poética de Emily Dickinson, focalizando certos aspectos ligados à sua auto-reclusão e subseqüente exclusão dos círculos literários da época, as quais tiveram decisiva influência em sua escrita. No embasamento teórico deste trabalho, valho-me da noção de biografema , idealizada por Roland Barthes, além de recorrer a outros conceitos literários mais atuais. Concentro-me sobretudo no aspecto poético que denomino estrangeirização , o qual permeia, a meu ver, toda a obra de Emily Dickinson, e não foi, ao que parece, estudado até agora, seja nos Estados Unidos, seu país natal, seja no Brasil, onde os seus poemas sempre mereceram atenção, tanto do público quanto da crítica literária

Millay and Dickinson, born more than sixty years apart, were subject to vastly different influences and environments, although their homes were in the same geographic area. Their poetry reflects the difference of their times and their own temperament, but both wrote from a great depth and understanding of feeling and experience about subjects common to all mankind - death, love, anguish, the significance of nature.

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