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Analysis of emily dickinson
Emily dickinson biography essay
Introduction of Emily Dickinson
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Nature is the most beautiful places for anyone to enjoy peace and stability in the human minds. Emily Dickinson is a naturalist poet that she wants the world to know that peace does exist in the human world and she wants to tell the world. Dickinson's poems are mostly written by "nature", "love", and "death" according to Anna Dunlap in her analysis. Dickinson's sister, Lavinia, is the one who published Dickinson's work, on her first attempt the editor that was responsible was taking her sweet time. This editor had Dickinson's work for two years so Lavinia decided to find another editor and Loomis Todd is the right person and editor for this job.
Once Lavinia found the perfect publisher "her brother's lover Mable Loomis Todd, who was responsible for the first editions of Dickinson's poems" (Dunlap). Many editors for Dickinson's volumes filled with her work was greatly polished because some of the words she uses were very confusing and incomprehension to understand the meaning she is trying to portray to the readers. "From correcting misspellings and misplaced apostrophes, Johnson lets Dickinson's original punctuation and capitalization stand" (Hoefel). Johnson is one of the editors, in the 1950s, after the first revision from Loomis Todd and after reading through Dickinson's work that is when he decided to publish her work and first published in 1960.
Most of her work has a meaning about nature and many of her titles seemed that way, but there is a twist to them. "A narrow Fellow in the Grass" to the metaphysics of "I died for Beauty — but was scarce," and poems such as "Sweet Mountains — Ye tell Me no lie — " are not just nature poems, but transformations, the creating of a more woman-centered religion that incor...
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... the reader understand the meaning that is behind it, like so “the poem concludes by asking rhetorically whether its listeners now understand the truths produced by both birds and poetry” (SparkNotes Editors). Besides nature being compared from birds a deeper meaning is behind this symbol and this is “art produces soothing, truthful sounds” (SparkNotes Editors) just like the soothing sounds from a bird that anyone can enjoy.
Works Cited
Dunlap, Anna. "The Complete Poems Of Emily Dickinson." Masterplots II: Women’S Literature Series (1995): 1-3. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
Hoefel, Roseanne L. "The Complete Poems Of Emily Dickinson." Masterplots, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-6. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Dickinson’s Poetry.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 26 Nov. 2013.
Edith Wylder, The Last Face: Emily Dickinson's Manuscripts (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1971).
Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she spent most of her life with her younger sister, older brother, semi-invalid mother, and domineering father in the house that her prominent family owned. As a child, she was curious and was considered a bright student and a voracious reader. She graduated from Amherst Academy in 1847, and attended a female seminary for a year, which she quitted as she considered that “’I [she] am [was] standing alone in rebellion [against becoming an ‘established Christian’].’” (Kort 1) and was homesick. Afterwards, she excluded herself from having a social life, as she took most of the house’s domestic responsibilities, and began writing; she only left Massachusetts once.
Griffith, Clark. The Long Shadow: Entity Dickinson's Tragic Poetry. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1964. Johnson, Thomas H. The Complete Poems of Entity Dickinson. Boston, Little, 1955. All references to Dickinson's poems are to this edition.
Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1960.
Emily Dickinson was an intricate and contradictory figure who moved from a reverent faith in God to a deep suspicion of him in her works. (Sherwood 3) Through her own intentional choice she was, in her lifetime, considered peculiar. Despite different people and groups trying to influence her, she resisted making a public confession of faith to Christ and the Church. (Sherwood 10) She wanted to establish her own wanted to establish her own individuality and, in doing so, turned to poetry. (Benfey 27) Dickinson’s poems were a sort of channel for her feelings and an “exploration” of her faith (Benfey 27).
Reading a poem by Emily Dickinson can often lead the reader to a rather introspective state. Dickinson writes at length about the drastically transformative effect a book may have upon its’ reader. Alternating between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, Dickinson masterfully uses the ballad meter to tell a story about the ecstasy brought by reading. In poem number 1587, she writes about the changes wrought upon the reader by a book and the liberty literature brings.
The life led by Emily Dickinson was one secluded from the outside world, but full of color and light within. During her time she was not well known, but as time progressed after her death more and more people took her works into consideration and many of them were published. Dickinson’s life was interesting in its self, but the life her poems held, changed American Literature. Emily Dickinson led a unique life that emotionally attached her to her writing and the people who would read them long after she died.
The main characteristic of Romanticism that Emily Dickinson portrays in her writing is the emphases of the importance of Nature to the Romantics. In most of her poems there is some mention or comparison to something found in Nature. In Poem 449, she refers to the moss that covers the names on the graves of the tombstones of “Beauty” and “Truth.” The Puritans believed Nature to be the realm of the devil. By including references to Nature in many of her poems, she was rebelling against the ideals of the Puritan upbringing she had hated so much.
Dickinson’s Christian education affected her profoundly, and her desire for a human intuitive faith motivates and enlivens her poetry. Yet what she has faith in tends to be left undefined because she assumes that it is unknowable. There are many unknown subjects in her poetry among them: Death and the afterlife, God, nature, artistic and poetic inspiration, one’s own mind, and other human beings.
In conclusion, it can be stated the examples of Emily Dickinson's work discussed in this essay show the poetess to be highly skilled in the use of humor and irony. The use of these two tools in her poems is to stress a point or idea the poetess is trying to express, rather than being an end in themselves. These two tools allow her to present serious critiques of her society and the place she feels she has been allocated into by masking her concerns in a light-hearted, irreverent tone.
Dickinson, Emily. ?Because I could not stop for Death.? Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. Kennedy, X.J., Dana Gioia. New York, NY: Pearson Longman, 2005, 1103.
Dickinson was unique and the “exception” in creating a private relationship with her self and her soul. In “Emily Dickinson and Popular Culture”, David S. Reynolds, a new historicism critic, wrote that it 's no surprise that the majority of Dickinson 's poetry was produced between 1858-1866, “It was a period of extreme consciousness about proliferation of varied women 's role in American culture.” It was a time where women were actively searching for more “literary” ways of self expression” (Reynolds 25). Dickinson was able to express her ideas and beliefs as a woman, something that was scandalous during this time period.
Emily Dickinson uses nature as a major theme in a lot of her poetry. Quite often, Dickinson overlaps the theme of nature with the theme of death as well as love and sexuality, which were the other major themes in her work. Dickinson describes nature in many different ways. She uses is to describe her surroundings and what she sees as well as a metaphor for other themes.
Dickinson, Emily. "Nature, Poem 1: Mother Nature." The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Series Two. Lit2Go Edition. 1896. Web. 14 March 2014.
Dickinson didn’t always wish to be an unpublished and unknown writer and at one point “began her career with a normal appetite for recognition.” (Wilbur) It is seen in her poem “Success is counted sweetest (112)” how she seems to praise an unknown success. Dickinson’s poems were numbers by when they were believed to have been written and as this was almost 150 poems before “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” it can be assumed it was during the time of her still wishing to be published. The third and fourth line in the poem state “To comprehend a nectar/ Requires sorest need” (3,4) in which the narrator is calling to attention that to truly enjoy the feeling of success you must truly want it to the point that you are suffering or feel like you would die without it. It contrasts greatly with her poem “260” where she believes it “dreary – to be- somebody” (5) and doesn’t wish to advertise herself at all or have success.