Journal article
Dickinson's Species of Narrative
The Emily Dickinson journal, Vol.18(1), pp.22-31
2009
DOI: 10.1353/edj.0.0203
Abstract
Dozens of narratives run through Emily Dickinson's work, but what is their function within the overwhelmingly lyric structure of her poems? This essay explores the field of meanings generated when Dickinson's word choices are read in the context of the intellectual debates of her time. In "This World is not conclusion" (Fr373) we find sociopolitical, scientific, and religious conflict all pressing against the lyric structure of the poem, and see Dickinson commenting on this very collision of forces. Specifically, the poem touches on the language of Charles Darwin's then recently published Origin of Species and on the religious and sociopolitical implications of the mid-nineteenth-century Opium Wars. Reading Dickinson's poems for their narrative elements may reveal much about their historicity, but more importantly these narrative threads reveal the subtlety and richness of her diction and the logic behind the emendations she made within the fascicles. While her poems have a purposeful topicality, they also repeatedly turn our attention away from historical narratives and toward a reconsideration of poetic creation itself and the priority of sound within her poems.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Dickinson's Species of Narrative
- Creators
- Elizabeth Willis
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- The Emily Dickinson journal, Vol.18(1), pp.22-31
- Publisher
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- DOI
- 10.1353/edj.0.0203
- ISSN
- 1059-6879
- eISSN
- 1096-858X
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2009
- Academic Unit
- Creative Writing
- Record Identifier
- 9984399469802771
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