This discussion purports to be an original study of the poetry of Emily Dickinson, a study based chiefly on the poems themselves and not on a digest of critical views and opinions.

La poésie d’Emily Dickinson dévoile un lyrisme théâtralisé : chaque poème devient une scène où évolue une voix qui se travestit, s’altère, se diffracte en divers échos. Très influencée par l’œuvre de Shakespeare, mais également par la théâtralité ambiante de l’Amérique victorienne, Dickinson met en scène le sujet lyrique dans ce qu’il a de plus théâtral. La théâtralité de référence étant celle du dramaturge et poète élisabéthain, cette "contamination" du théâtre nous incite à élargir notre conception du lyrisme. Si l’on observe des résurgences ironiques d’une conception traditionnelle du lyrisme comme un épanchement intime, ce dernier est surtout à envisager en termes de dynamique, d’énergie. Le théâtre est pour Emily Dickinson le lieu autre où le lyrisme s’altère plus avant, la structure nodale de l’écriture lyrique et son cœur battant, le lieu de sa revitalisation. / Emily Dickinson’s poetry showcases a dramatic kind of lyricism: each poem becomes a scene where the lyric voice changes shape, tone, and even gender. Strongly influenced by Shakespeare’s work and by the extremely theatrical culture of Victorian America, Dickinson stages the lyrical self at its most theatrical. The fact that the Elizabethan playwright and poet’s idiosyncratic theater was the main reference for Dickinson’s conception of drama and theatricality invites us to broaden our conception of lyricism. Although some recurrences of a more traditional approach to lyricism as an outpouring of intimate feelings appear at times – mostly tainted with a great deal of irony – lyricism will mainly be considered as the energy fueling life into the poem. The theater is for Emily Dickinson the spring of this lyrical energy, the transformative force and the crucial structure at the heart of her poetic writing.

[pt] A proposta desta pesquisa foi identificar e analisar os principais agentes de reescrita e de patronagem que concorreram para a inserção e difusão da obra de Emily Dickinson no sistema literário brasileiro, a partir da primeira tradução de Manuel Bandeira, em 1928, até os dias de hoje. Como aporte teórico, utilizamos a Teoria dos Polissistemas, de Itamar Even-Zohar (1997 [1990], 2005); os conceitos de reescrita e patronagem, de André Lefevere (1990, 1992); as noções de capital social, econômico, cultural e simbólico, de Pierre Bourdieu (1986), para informar a análise do perfil dos tradutores de Dickinson; e a Teoria dos Paratextos, de Gérard Genette (2009), na apresentação da poeta e de sua obra ao público leitor brasileiro. Constatamos que os poemas de Dickinson, embora tenham sido traduzidos a partir do início dos anos 1900, ganharam maior repercussão a partir de meados do século. A tradução de Cecília Meireles do poema “I died for Beauty”, em 1954, foi incluída em uma antologia de poesia estrangeira amplamente difundida no país; e a publicação da obra The Complete Poems of Dickinson, por Thomas H. Johnson, numa criteriosa edição de Harvard (1955), resgatando os poemas na íntegra, sem as correções de seus antigos editores, resultou na ressignificação de sua obra no polissistema literário dos EUA e também do Brasil. Vale mencionar as traduções de Dickinson feitas por Haroldo e Augusto de Campos e Décio Pignatari, do movimento concretista, que buscava chamar a atenção para os aspectos formais da poesia e não apenas para o seu conteúdo semântico. Verificamos também que a expansão dos Estudos da Tradução, que propiciou o surgimento de novas teorias, abordagens, métodos e conceitos, ampliando as perspectivas para o estudo da tradução de poesia, aliada à atuação dos agentes de reescrita e de patronagem e aos bem produzidos paratextos, muito contribuíram para a inserção e difusão da poesia de Dickinson no Brasil. / [en] The purpose of this thesis is to identify and analyze the main rewriting and patronage agents which contributed to the introduction and dissemination of Emily Dickinson s work in the Brazilian literary system, starting in 1928 with Manuel Bandeira s first translation up to this day. The research was informed by Itamar Even-Zohar s Polysystems Theory (1997 [1990], 2005); André Lefevere s concept of rewriting and patronage (1990, 1992); Pierre Bourdieu s notions of economic, cultural, and symbolic capital, instrumental to analyze the profile of Dickinson s translators; and Gérard Genette s Paratext Theory (2009), to discuss the presentation of the poet and her work to Brazilian readers. We found that Dickinson s poems, though they had been translated into Portuguese in the early 1900 s, gained greater repercussion since the middle of the century when Cecília Meireles s translation of I died for Beauty, in 1954, was included in an anthology of foreign poetry and widely disseminated in the country; and when the publication of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, in a careful Harvard edition, in 1955, recovered Dickinson s poems in full, without the corrections of her former editors, and resulted in the resignification of her work both in the U.S. literary polysystem and the Brazilian one. It is worth mentioning the translations of Dickinson s poems by Haroldo de Campos, Augusto de Campos, and Décio Pignatari, founders of the Concrete Movement, which intended to draw attention to the formal aspects of poetry, and not just to its semantic content. The expansion of Translation Studies, which led to the emergence of new theories, approaches, methods, and concepts, thus broadening the prospects for the study of poetry translation, combined with the performance of rewriters and patrons and with well-produced paratexts, has also greatly contributed to the introduction and dissemination of Dickinson s poetry in Brazil.

This essay seeks to investigate how bodies can be understood as a narrative element in five poems written by the American poet Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886). Using phenomenology as understood by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Elizabeth Grosz as a theoretical framework and a corporeal narratology as drawn up by Daniel Punday, the essay explores how the bodies of the characters within the fictional world are portrayed, which bodies are present and what places and types of situations they occupy. All in order to see how the narrative as a whole is affected in each poem. The essay uses the terms body and space, as being defined by the theoretical underpinnings, to structure the analysis. The study shows that the body indeed can be understood as a way of structuring the narrative in the poems. Mainly, the present bodies are used as a way of organizing spatiality and form a specific perspective. The degree of activity of the different bodies are also dependent on normative and conventional aspects. The use of narratology when analyzing poems of this sort requires flexibility, especially since the study focuses on elements that are not always explicitly portrayed.

Denna studie fokuserar på den amerikanska poeten Emily Dickinson och hennes psykiska hälsa samt kreativitet och skrivande. Syftet är att lyfta fram hur fyra utvalda teman; hjärna, hjärta, sinne och själen, framställs i Dickinsons poesi. Detta handlar därför om en tematisk analys, där frågeställningar besvaras med hjälp av psykoanalytiska teorier. Studiens resultat visar att Dickinsons poesi fungerar som en brygga mellan hennes subjektiva känslor och allmänmänskliga teman. Det har lyfts fram medvetna samt omedvetna faktorer, vilka har kopplats till poetens psykiska tillstånd och därmed visat på hennes styrkor samt svagheter, i synnerhet vad gäller den kreativa skrivprocessen. Dickinsons poesi har slutligen argumenterats för att vara psykologiskt intriktad, och slutsatsen i denna studie förklarar därför vilka fördelar det finns med att läsa Dickinson med hjälp av psykoanalytiska teorier. Genom läsning av Dickinson i samband med Freud och andra psykoanalytiker skapas en koppling mellan poetens psykiska tillstånd samt hennes dikter, där psykoanalytiska teorier som fokuserar på kreativitet och skapande blir ett hjälpmedel för att läsaren ska få en djupare inblick i poetens liv och skrivande.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

My thesis researched memory and perception through an examination of surfaces. Acting as skin, boundary, veil, or terrain, the surfaces I created revealed imprints and residues that offered information used to clarify distorted perceptions. I attempted to locate evidence in parts of my body, and in physical matter, that contained a record of history. The work was often site specific, with the wall playing an intrinsic role in the construction of these pieces, made of paper, thread, and wax. Their surfaces referenced landscapes of the earth and of the body, a mental terrain shaped over time by the paths of repetitive thoughts and the steady advance of emotional forces. In the end, the surfaces asked more questions than they could answer, and it was this mystery within the surfaces that I would devote myself to. The work embraced ambiguity, shadows, and what was hidden beneath the surface.

Emily Dickinson's poetry functions where scientific attention to the physical world and abstract theorizing about the ineffable intersect. Critics who emphasize the poet's dedication to the scientific often take for granted how deeply the uncertainty that underlies all of Dickinson's poetry opposes scientific discussion of the day. Meteorology is an exceptional nineteenth-century science because it takes as its subject complex systems which are inexplicable in Newtonian terms. As such, meteorology can articulate the ways that Dickinson bridges the divide between the unknown and the known, particularly as she relates to the interplay of nature and culture, the role of careful observation in the face of uncertainty, and issues of home and dwelling. These are themes integral to and further elaborated by contemporary ecocritical discourse.

Paul Celan's translations of Emily Dickinson's poems Because I could not stop for Death and Let down the Bars, Oh Death illuminate the global metaphor inherent in both poems' exploration of death. Celan's The Meridian speech, coupled with Dickinson's poems I saw no way and Tell all the truth, suggest that language can move in different directions across a globe at the same time. When these different lines meet, they reach a meridian of the spiritual and the material. As Celan translates Dickinson's two poems, he uses this global metaphor to place more emphasis on death and to further illuminate how ambiguity is used in the poems to represent what death is, thus highlighting Dickinson's original project in her death poems.

Taking a cue from the occasional reticence of the often-exuberant American Romantic poetics, this project tracks what I call “rhetorics of silence” in verse: those moments where words are declared to be inadequate, impertinent, unavailable, unintelligible or otherwise unsuitable for a task that the poet has proposed. In this respect, the term “silence” functions here as a broad metaphor encompassing a number of meta-linguistic or meta-poetic gestures aimed at highlighting the shortcomings of knowledge and representation. Whereas earlier critics have noticed these silences in haphazard ways, this project looks toward a systematic account of why and when nineteenth-century poets rely on gestures to the space beyond language. This intervention is especially useful for reading the seminal American poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Because Whitman seems celebratory and Dickinson doleful, it has often been difficult to offer productive readings of the two in tandem. Where Whitman does resemble Dickinson, it is often thought to be in his poems that abandon or despair of his project for a democratic poetics. By contrast, working through the lyric and political verse of the lesser-known poetry of John Rollin Ridge, this project reads visionary and despairing silences as alike rhetorical gestures aimed at highlighting the common humanity of the poet and the reader. “Silence” is therefore an outgrowth of American ideology, albeit one that frequently allows poets to expand and query that ideology in ways that are not possible in the many corresponding but often blither deployments of rhetorical silence in the culture at large.