Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1995

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

English

Major Professor

Dorothy M. Scura

Committee Members

Arthur Smith, George Hutchinson, Russell Buhite

Abstract

This New HIstoricist-based study examines the relationship among Emily Dickinson's prose, her poetic vision, and the domestic life. Chapter one provides an overview of three strands of Dickinson scholarship: the history of commentary on the poetic nature of the letters, the criticism that speaks of Emily Dickinson's life at home, and the scholarship that focuses on Dickinson and domesticity. Ultimately, my work brings these three approaches together, an investigation of the domestic woman poet's life and experience of poetic insight as they are revealed in the poetic passages of her letters. Chapter two examines the link between nineteenth-century ideals about household "system and regularity" and poetry. Dickinson's letters indicate that she often achieved revelation in the midst of domestic duties, that they acted as a gateway to poetic perception. Her descriptions of such flashes of insight suggest an experience that is a time out of time, an enraptured moment of higher consciousness not unlike those experienced in tantric meditation or mystical vision. Here, however, the mantra is the ceremony of daily pattern. Chapter three examines specific domestic images, arguing that Emily Dickinson's poetic sensibilities led to a unique relationship between woman and duty. The result of this alliance is prose rich in metaphors which reveal Dickinson's wit, the general truths she perceived in diurnal tasks, her emotional life, and the poetic vision she experienced at home. Chapter four investigates a particular duty: the performance of the tasks of domestic manners. Examining poetic passages in letters sent to answer kindnesses and to comfort and console others, I argue that through this branch of household governance, Dickinson investigated the nature of need and love. Chapter five focuses on the poet's articulation of her experience of home, an expression often made in metaphor. Looking first at her correspondence with Thomas Higginson and then at her images of home in various letters, I suggest that Emily Dickinson's life at home was invested with sacredness and poetic inspiration.

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