A Companion to Emily Dickinson

by Smith, Martha Nell; Loeffelholz, Mary

• ISBN13: 9781405122801
• ISBN10: 1405122803
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-02-26
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

This Companion to America's greatest woman poet showcases the diversity and excellence that characterize the thriving field of Dickinson studies. The volume's original contributions are written by cutting-edge scholars and provide incisive interventions into current critical discussions as well as opening up fresh areas of critical inquiry. They feature new work being done in the critique of nineteenth-century American poetry, as well as new work being done in Dickinson studies. The Companion is exceptionally broad in scope, covering biographical approaches to Dickinson, the historical, political and cultural contexts of her work, and its critical reception over the years. Unusually, the volume also emphasizes issues relating to the different formats in which Dickinson's lyrics have been published - manuscript, print, halftone and digital facsimile. In all areas, readers are able to benefit from using the volume alongside the Dickinson Electronic Archives, an online resource developed over the past ten years by one of the editors, together with teams of Dickinson critics, and markup and programming specialists.

Author Biography

Martha Nell Smith is Professor of English and Founding Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities at the University of Maryland. Her numerous publications include three award-winning books – Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan Dickinson (1998), Comic Power in Emily Dickinson (1993), Rowing in Eden: Rereading Emily Dickinson (1992) – and over 30 journal articles. The recipient of numerous awards for her work on Dickinson and in new media, Smith is also Coordinator and Executive Editor of the Dickinson Electronic Archives projects at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) at the University of Virginia.

Mary Loeffelholz is Professor and Special Advisor to the President for Faculty Affairs at Northeastern University. She is the author of From School to Salon: Reading Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Poetry (2004), Experimental Lives: Women and Literature, 1900–1945 (1992), Dickinson and the Boundaries of Feminist Theory (1991), and of a number of essays on nineteenth-century American poetry and culture. She is also editor of Studies in American Fiction and of Volume D, Between the Wars: 1914–1945 in the seventh edition of the Norton Anthology of American Literature.

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors

Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Sources

Introduction

Biography - the Myth of 'the Myth'

Architecture of the Unseen

Fracturing a Master Narrative, Reconstructing 'Sister Sue'

Public, Private Spheres: What Reading Emily Dickinson's Mail Taught me about Civil Wars

'Pretty much all real life': The Material World of the Dickinson Family

The Civil War - Historical and Political Contexts

'Drums off the Phantom Battlements': Dickinson's War Poems in Discursive Context

The Eagle's Eye: Dickinson's View of Battle

'How News Must Feel When Traveling': Dickinson and Civil War Media

Cultural Contexts - Literature, Philosophy, Theology, Science

Really Indigenous Productions

Nineteenth-Century Popular Verse

Thinking Dickinson Thinking Poetry

Dickinson and the Exception

Dickinson's Uses of Spiritualism: The 'Nature' of Democratic Belief

'Forever - is Composed of Nows - 'Emily Dickinson's Conception of Time'

God's Place in Dickinson's Ecology

Textual Conditions: Manuscripts, Printings, Digital Surrogates

Auntie Gus Felled It New

Reading Dickinson in Her Context: The Fascicles

The Poetics of Interruption: Dickinson, Death, and the Fascicles

Climates of the Creative Process: Dickinson's Epistolary Journal

Hearing the Visual Lines: How Manuscript Study Can Contribute to an Understanding of Dickinson's Prosody

'The Thews of Hymn': Dickinson's Metrical Grammar

'Dickinson's Structured Rhythms'

A Digital Regiving: Editing the Sweetest Messages in the Dickinson Electronic Archives

Editing Dickinson in an Electronic Environment

Poetry & Media - Dickinson's Legacies

'Dare you see a soul at the White Heat?': Thoughts on a 'Little Home-keeping Person'

Re-Playing the Bible: My Emily Dickinson

'For Flash and Click and Suddenness-': Emily Dickinson and the Photography-Effect

'Zero to the Bone': Thelonious Monk, Emily Dickinson, and the Rhythms of Modernism

Index of First Lines

Index of Letters of Emily Dickinson

Index

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