The Cambridge Introduction to Emily Dickinson

by Martin, Wendy;

• ISBN13: 9780521672702
• ISBN10: 0521672708
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-03-19
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Emily Dickinson is best known as an intensely private, even reclusive writer. Yet the way she has been mythologised has meant her work is often misunderstood. This introduction delves behind the myth to present a poet who was deeply engaged with the issues of her day. In a lucid and elegant style, the book places her life and work in the historical context of the Civil War, the suffrage movement, and the rapid industrialisation of the United States. Wendy Martin explores the ways in which Dickinson's personal struggles with romantic love, religious faith, friendship and community shape her poetry. The complex publication history of her works, as well as their reception, is teased out, and a guide to further reading is included. Dickinson emerges not only as one of America's finest poets, but also as a fiercely independent intellect and an original talent writing poetry far ahead of her time.

Author Biography

Wendy Martin is Professor of American Literature and American Studies at Claremont Graduate University.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. x
Life	p. 1
The Dickinson family	p. 1
A portrait of the poet as a young girl	p. 5
Early ambitions, difficult changes	p. 10
Preceptors	p. 14
"Sister Sue"	p. 15
A "Woman - white - to be"	p. 18
Context	p. 24
Religious culture: Puritanism, the Great Awakenings, and revivals	p. 24
Industrialization and the individual	p. 27
Political culture: expansion and the antebellum period	p. 28
Social movements: Abolition and women's rights	p. 30
Philosophical reactions: Transcendentalism	p. 32
The Civil War	p. 34
Works	p. 40
Sweeping with many-colored brooms: the influence of the domestic	p. 51
Blasphemous devotion: biblical allusion in the poems and letters	p. 58
"Easy, quite, to love": friendship and love in Dickinson's life and works	p. 70
"The Heaven - below": nature poems	p. 86
"A Riddle, at the last": death and immortality	p. 97
Reception	p. 110
"The Auction Of the Mind": publication history	p. 110
Editing the poems and letters	p. 117
Early reception	p. 121
New Criticism	p. 123
Dickinson's legacy today	p. 128
Notes	p. 132
Guide to further reading	p. 139
Index	p. 144
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