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"Behind the wall of sense": Emily Dickinson and her nineteenth-century British writers
Abstract
Her letters have been neglected somewhat in Emily Dickinson scholarship, as have nineteenth-century British writers despite the fact they are mentioned more in her letters than their American contemporaries. Led by these references, I examined the copies of the family books held at the Frost Library, Amherst College and in the Houghton Library, Harvard University. The examination of the texts and close readings of Dickinson's letters and poems shows that she formed a literary coterie made up of books to which she turned for inspiration. Written as a study to complement Karl Keller's The Only Kangaroo Among the Beauty (1979), this study reinforces Dickinson's place within canon of 19th Century American writing. Keller reads Dickinson through American authors from Anne Bradstreet to Ralph Waldo Emerson. He succeeds in explicating Dickinson's relationships with these authors to show their importance in her evolution as a "vernacular poet." Because Dickinson's poetry seems to be unconventional at times, readers and critics have begrudgingly placed her within the canon of the nineteenth century; I will show in the following chapters that she belongs there firmly. Chapter I introduces Dickinson's affinities to women writers of her time and states the thesis of the study. In Chapter II, Wordsworth's contribution to Dickinson's poetic development is seen through his early poems and The Prelude. Chapter III discusses Dickinson's reading of Byron's "The Prisoner of Chillon" and demonstrates that once she read it, she never forgot it. Keats's poetry may have influenced Dickinson as well, although presently no evidence exists showing that she owned any of his books. Chapter IV adds new information to previous critics' discussions of Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot through careful examination of Dickinson's copies of their works. In Chapter V, I show Dickinson's debt to Tennyson and demonstrate that her fondness for Robert Browning was based on his own artistic merit rather than his marriage. Finally, Chapter VI concludes by tracing the centrality and commonality of these seven writers and how, by appropriating them as her mentors, Dickinson produced work that belongs alongside theirs.
Subject Area
American literature|British and Irish literature
Recommended Citation
Tanter, Marcy Lynne, ""Behind the wall of sense": Emily Dickinson and her nineteenth-century British writers" (1996). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9639037.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9639037