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<p> The implication of the title of this thesis, Emily Dickinson's Spectrum, is that this poet had a highly individual attitude towards colour, an attitude which the analysis of colour-imagery in the poet's writings will illuminate. The first chapter of the thesis demonstrates how the poet's scientific background enabled her to set up a spectrum that differed from the "received" Newtonian spectrum in many ways. The second chapter shows how Dickinson's originality, a quality often noticed by critics, is to a large extent the product of her ability to manipulate the colours of her spectrum in a manner analogous to the practice of the pictorial artist. The third chapter explains, however, that though her use of colour was indeed original, her practice reflects the international anti-Newtonian "colour-revolution" of the era in which she lived, a revolution in which she had a significant role to play notwithstanding her apparent seclusion in Amherst. In the final chapter, Emily Dickinson's spectrum is set out, and each of its chief colours is shown to be a concise means of referring to a different complex or node of emotions that are at once personal and universal in their import.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

A poetry thesis exploring subjects of gender identity, sexuality, socialization, writing, and craft, and including a preface that credits Emily Dickinson and Adrienne Rich as primary influences. One-third of the manuscript features epistolary prose poems in conversation with Dickinson, while the remaining portion contains poetry written in either free verse, traditional poetic form, or field composition.

Traditional feminist readings have valued women's writing that voices silenced experiences. In contrast, other twentieth-century theoretical formulations regard absences, refusals, and silences as constitutive of aesthetic practice rather than as imposed upon it. This dissertation attends carefully to how U.S. women writers approach the nonlinguistic, accounting for how they have been silenced as well as for the kinds of silencing that women poets themselves perform. It argues that U.S. women's experimental poetry is driven by contradictory relationships to language and silence: in one strain, gendered cultural repression spurs American women poets to push language into new territory, often figured as speaking out. But in another mode, female identification with the nonrational or nonlinguistic, whether externally enforced or strategically inhabited, impels women to develop poetic silences in order to resist the impositions of language on a feminized other. Meeting these simultaneous and opposed goals--creating poetic forms capable of greater expressive range while signaling the inadequacy of linguistic expression--necessitates formal experimentation. My primary claim that an unresolved ambivalence toward the nonlinguistic drives innovation dictates an emphasis on formal technique, including syntax, rhyme and meter, sentence and stanza structure, and figuration. This attention to poetic particulars grounds my contextualization of the work of each poet I consider--Emily Dickinson, Lorine Niedecker, and Gwendolyn Brooks--in relation to her own life, to broader literary and cultural histories, and to poststructuralist theories of language. The first chapter of my dissertation explores the role that early American, particularly Puritan and Transcendental, attitudes toward wilderness shape poetic motivations both to extend and limit the reach of language throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In subsequent chapters, I evaluate how those motivations change in the context of Dickinson's nineteenth-century spirituality, Niedecker's modernist and postmodernist anxieties about the role of the poet, and Brooks's engagement with the politics and aesthetics of black nationalism. Reading U.S. women's poetic innovation as simultaneously breaking and cultivating silences opens a dialogue among historically feminist understandings of silence as oppressive, theories that put silence at the heart of poetic impulse, and avant-garde theoretical conceptions of linguistic experimentation as a feminist project.

This thesis highlights the fact that the way Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost understood nature informed their work as writers. The underlying theme through each chapter is how epistemology about the natural world is created. It compares two seemingly opposed approaches to knowledge construction about nature, answering the question: Is knowledge and value about nature socially constructed or inherently existent and discovered. The second chapter emphasizes that Dickinson considered knowledge based in nature to be socially constructed, making the subjugation of the nineteenth-century woman one of her central subjects. The third chapter shows how Frost agreed with social constructivism in that knowledge is the product of imaginative involvement; he used a constructive stance to emphasize humanity's important role in compelling nature to reveal spiritual truths, which made the reciprocal relationship between people and their environments central to his work. The concluding chapter synthesizes these two approaches and suggests that both are necessary in our modern day understanding of nature.

I identify three significant components of Heaven’s spatiality that determine the boundaries of and conditions for “legitimate” spiritual experience, all of which are embodied in what Dickinson calls “the apparatus” of prayer (Fr 632). First, the locations of Heaven and Earth are determinable, absolute, and inflexible, thus marking the distance that separates human from God as static and constant; second, in order to engage God, the supplicant must turn towards Heaven (and away from Earth); and third, specific spatial and emotional protocol are established by assigning God socially constructed roles such as King or Father. Dickinson dismantles the spatiality of Heaven in her poems and letters by undoing these three components; yet even in the act of disassembling, she embraces and recycles their respective ideologies as a way of claiming sole ownership of her religiosity.

When singers perform art songs, how many of them, especially students, learn about the poem and poet behind the lyrics? It might be that a number of singers focus on composers, however not poets. Even in concert programs, it is common to only write the composer’s name. I am one of the singers that has learned lyrics in the last minute before a concert or an examination. I will experiment with changing my learning process and see if that makes any difference when performing the art song.  The purpose of this study is also to focus on the poet Emily Dickinson. Furthermore, to find out about the music of composers from the 20th century onwards using Dickinson’s poems. I choose Aaron Copland’s song cycle “Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson”.  Finally, I will perform the work and demonstrate if there is a difference in the singing interpretation by studying not only the music but also the poems behind the lyrics. “Who is Emily Dickinson?” The study explores this question first. After researching 100 songs using her poems, I chose three composers, Aaron Copland, Libby Larsen and Niccolò Castiglioni. Thereafter, “Bind me - I can still sing” of Larsen and “Dickinson-Lieder” of Castiglioni is mentioned. Furthermore, the song cycle “Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson” by Copland is analyzed deeply to find out more about the piece and why the composer was inspired by Dickinson. It was discovered that one is able to understand the piece deeply, knowing not only about the life of the composer, but also the poet leads to a better understanding of the work. From the singer’s point of view, the level of expression and singing performance has improved after researching the poet Emily Dickinson.  The study concludes knowing deeply about the poet that there is no doubt how important the poem is when understanding and interpreting art song. / <p>Soprano: Hitomi Ohki</p><p>Piano: Anders Kilström</p><p></p><p>Aaron Copland (1900-1990)</p><p>Twelve Poems of Emily Dickonson</p><p>1, Nature, the gentlest mother</p><p>2, There came a wind like a bugle</p><p>3, Why do they shut me out of Heaven?</p><p>4, The world feels dusty</p><p>5, Heart, we will forget him!</p><p>6, Dear March, come in!</p><p>7, Sleep is supposed to be</p><p>8, When they come back</p><p>9, I felt a funeral in my brain</p><p>10, I've heard an organ talk sometimes</p><p>11, Going to Heaven!</p><p>12, The Chariot</p>