American
Literary Masters:
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
1830-1886
Emily Dickinson: Biography
Born
1830 in Amherst, MA
Grandfather founded Amherst
College (where she attended)
Known as reclusive/private; most of
her work crafted in the form of letters/
correspondence written from home
 ED
‘The woman in white’
“A solemn thing – it was – I said –
A Woman – White – to be –
And wear – if God should count me fit –
Her blameless mystery –”
(Dickinson, 1861)
Emily Dickinson: Biography
 Despite
her prolific writing, fewer than a
dozen poems were published in her
lifetime
 She died in 1886 (age = 55)
 Younger sister Lavinia discovered the
collection of nearly eighteen hundred
poems
 Dickinson's first volume was published four
years after her death.
 First official anthology 1955 publication
of Dickinson's Complete Poems by Thomas
H. Johnson
Emily Dickinson: Influences
Dickinson’s literary influences:
 William Wordsworth
 Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(Kavanagh)
 Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre)
 William Shakespeare (Othello;
King Lear; Hamlet)
Emily Dickinson: Periods
Dickinson’s Poetry: Periods
 Dickinson’s
poems generally fall into
three distinct periods, the works in each
period having certain general characters
in common:
Pre-1861
 Conventional
and sentimental in nature
1861-1865
 Vigorous,
creative and emotionally
driven
 Themes of life and death
Post-1866
Emily Dickinson: Style
Dickinson’s Poetry: Style
Syntax:
 Extensive use of dashes
 Unconventional capitalization
 Idiosyncratic vocabulary and imagery
 Use of paradox (self-defeating truth)
 Structure:
 Opted for trimeter and tetrameter; avoided
pentameter
 Employed ballad stanza; quatrains
 ABCB rhyme scheme; slant rhyme
 Resonances fit to melodies of folk songs and
hymns

Emily Dickinson: Themes
Dickinson’s Poetry: Major Themes
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Flowers and gardens
 One of Dickinson’s greatest passions was botany;
saw gardens as “imaginative realms” and their
flowers as “emblems for action”
The Master poems
 Confessional poetry addressed to “Signor”/“Sir”
Morbidity
 Fascination with illness, dying and death
Gospel poems
 Preoccupation with the teachings of Jesus Christ
The Undiscovered Continent
 Dickinson saw the mind and spirit as tangible,
visitable place
Emily Dickinson: Quotes
“My friends are my estate.”
“A word is dead when it is said,
some say. I say it just begins to
live that day.”
“Morning without you is a
dwindled dawn.”
“Saying nothing…sometimes
says the most.”
“A wounded deer leaps the
highest.”
“To love is so startling it leaves
little time for anything else.”
“People need hard times and
oppression to develop psychic
muscles.”
“I dwell in possibility.”