Changing Rapture: Emily Dickinson's Poetic DevelopmentUniversity Press of New England, 2006 - 187 pages Aliki Barnstone challenges the critical commonplace that Emily Dickinson's poetry did not change and evolve over the course of her career as a poet. She argues that this notion of her lack of development, while it contributes the established myth of the isolated and timeless Dickinson, has tended to diminish our appreciation of her as a poet and thinker, whose work is both an innovative artistic achievement and a cultural commentary. Throughout the book, Barnstone contextualizes Dickinson's evolving spiritual and poetic development within nineteenth-century American culture. Barnstone identifies four major phases in Dickinson's development, which are marked by her struggle against the Calvinist tradition in which she was raised and her growing involvement with Transcendentalism. In the first phase, Dickinson critiques Calvinism and Sentimentalism through satire. In the second, intensely prolific period, she experiences an intellectual crisis, in which she masters the Calvinist theology that vexes her through a process Barnstone terms "self-conversion." In the third phase, the poet's work develops from a struggle with Calvinist self-annihilation and despair to a reworking of Emerson's Transcendental, exalted discovery of the self. Barnstone concludes her volume with an exploration of the recent debates over the textual problems in Dickinson's work, bringing them to bear on the canon of the poet's late work, which consists largely of letter-poems. Her whole life, Dickinson grappled with death, loss of loved ones, and the afterlife; at the end of her career, she developed her own intimate and relational form of literary immortality in letters. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Renaming | 30 |
Appropriations of Crisis Conversion | 54 |
Copyright | |
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Amherst Amherst College Anne Bradstreet argues Armand artist asserts beautiful becomes believe Birth-mark Brain butterfly Calvinism Calvinist child Christ consciousness conventional creates creative crisis conversion cultural death Dick Dickinson wrote Dickinson's development Dickinson's poems Dickinson's poetry divine early earthly edition election Emerson Emily Dickinson eternal experience faith fascicles Father feel felt a Funeral fragment friends God's heart heaven heavenly Higginson Horace Bushnell human iambic pentameter imagination immortal inson internal Johnson language letter-poem letters line breaks lineated literary live Lord Mabel Loomis Todd manuscripts Marianne Moore Master meaning myth nature notion numb orthodox Over-Eye pain Paula Bennett perception Phaedrus Phillips Lord Plato poet poet's poetic prose Puritan question R. W. Franklin Rapture reader redemption religious reveals rhyme satirical self-conversion self-reliance sentimental soul speaker spiritual stanza Susan texts Thomas Wentworth Higginson tion transcendental transforms truth University unto verse vision voice women words writes