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1 results

  • Chapter 21 - Political Poets and Naturalism

  • from Part II - A New Nation: Poetry from 1800 to 1900
  • Edited by Alfred Bendixen, Princeton University, New Jersey, Stephen Burt, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of American Poetry
    Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    27 October 2014, pp 472-494

  • Summary

    Emily Dickinson's poetry addresses the social ostracism she experienced as a religious skeptic. In some poems, she uses religious and biblical language but undercuts it by using punctuation and physical format to emphasize its dubious qualities. Dickinson has often been portrayed as a victim of Victorian social conventions, but her life, like her poetry, was a declaration of independence from the limitations of prescribed behavior. Dickinson's poems explore a wide range of emotions ranging from fury to ecstasy; much of her poetry focuses on love, autonomy, nature, and death. Dickinson accepted the inevitability of death, and her poems celebrate her deepest convictions that life should take on intense meaning in the context of mortality. Throughout her life, Dickinson rejected social convention and the comforts of religion. Her poetry and letters form a chronicle of her challenging, and often dramatic, adventure.