ENG 388 - Emily Dickinson - ENG 3XX - Living Traditions

Emily Dickinson

Library Databases

Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB) Gale Cengage This link opens in a new window Provides authoritative information while placing writers in the larger perspective of literary history.This one-stop resource provides access to all volumes of the Dictionary of Literary Biography series (more than 360 vols.), the Dictionary of Literary Biography Documentary Series (19 vols.) and the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook (23 vols.) — a total of more than 400 volumes and 185,000 pages.
Eighteenth Century Fiction This link opens in a new window Contains the complete text of 96 works of English prose from the period 1700-1780, by writers from the British Isles. All of the most widely-studied texts are in the database, alongside others long neglected or unavailable. The complete text of each work is included. First editions have been used unless considered unreliable.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window Includes more than 2,000 academic journals, dating back to the first volume ever published, along with thousands of monographs and other materials relevant for education.
MLA International Bibliography (EDS) This link opens in a new window Index to books and articles published on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics

Literature Criticism Online (LCO) Gale Cengage Offers a range of modern and historical views on authors and their works across regions, eras and genres, including the scholarly and popular commentary from broadsheets, pamphlets, encyclopedias, books and periodicals — delivered in an easy format that matches the exact look and feel of the print originals. Search Poetry Criticism and Short Story Criticism in this database.

Library Resources

Our Emily Dickinsons : American women poets and the intimacies of difference by Vivian R. Pollak.
Call Number: 811 D56zpoℓ
ISBN: 9780812248449
Publication Date: 2017
Places Dickinson's life and work within the context of larger debates about gender, sexuality, and literary authority in America and complicates the connections between creative expression, authorial biography, audience reception, and literary genealogy.
Emily Dickinson's poems : as she preserved them by Emily Dickinson; edited by Cristanne Miller
Call Number: 811 D56em
ISBN: 9780674737969
Publication Date: 2016
Liturgical liaisons : the textual body, irony, and betrayal in John Donne and Emily Dickinson by Jamey Heit ; with a foreword by David Jasper
Call Number: 809.1 H365
ISBN: 9781610977708
Publication Date: 2013
Lives like loaded guns : Emily Dickinson and her family's feuds by Lyndall Gordon
Call Number: 811 D56zgo
ISBN: 9780670021932
Publication Date: 2010
This volume tells the story of a feud that erupted within the family of American poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) and that still continues today. Making use of letters, diaries, and legal documents, the author reveals the secret behind the poet's insistent seclusion, presenting a woman beyond her time who found love, spirituality, and immortality all on her own terms.
The Emily Dickinson handbook by Gudrun Grabher, Roland Hagenbüchle, Cristanne Miller, editors.
Call Number: 811 D56zg
ISBN: 1558491694
Publication Date: 1998

Also available online The Emily Dickinson handbook

Loaded Gun : Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century by Jerome Charyn
ISBN: 9781934137987
Publication Date: 2016
We think we know Emily Dickinson: the Belle of Amherst, virginal, reclusive, and possibly mad. But in A Loaded Gun, Jerome Charyn introduces us to a different Emily Dickinson: the fierce, brilliant, and sexually charged poet.
Emily Dickinson and philosophy by editors, Marianne Noble, American University, Jed Deppman, Oberlin College, Gary Lee Stonum, Case Western Reserve University.
ISBN: 9781107029415
Publication Date: 2013
Emily Dickinson's poetry is deeply philosophical. Recognizing that conventional language limited her thought and writing, Dickinson created new poetic forms to pursue the moral and intellectual issues that mattered most to her. This collection situates Dickinson within the rapidly evolving intellectual culture of her time and explores the degree to which her groundbreaking poetry anticipated trends in twentieth-century thought.
Emily Dickinson's approving God : divine design and the problem of suffering by Patrick J. Keane
ISBN: 9780826218087
Publication Date: 2008
Focusing on Emily Dickinson's poem "Apparently with no surprise," Keane explores the poet's embattled relationship with the deity of her Calvinist tradition, reflecting on literature and religion, faith and skepticism, theology and science in light of continuing confrontations between Darwinism and design, science and literal conceptions of a divine Creator
The Cambridge companion to Emily Dickinson by Wendy Martin, editor
ISBN: 9780521001182
Publication Date: 2002
Specially commissioned essays examine all of Dickinson's major writings, and places her work in a variety of literary, cultural and political contexts. It features a detailed chronology and a comprehensive guide to further reading.

The Emily Dickinson Journal by Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication Date: 1992-present
Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin by Emily Dickinson International Society
Publication Date: 11/01/2003 to present
Discusses the study and appreciation of Emily Dickinson throughout the world.
Publisher URL: http://www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org/

Dickinson's Superb Surprise
he article presents an in-depth exploration into the poetry of Emily Dickinson, particularly focusing on its prominent elements of surprise and wonder as central features of her works. The poet's consistent treatment of the dualism between consciousness and the unconscious in moments of discovery is described and analyzed. The psycho-philosophical elements of Dickinson's "Inner-Outer" dialectic are particularly examined, analyzing her style within the broader literary context of the Romantic movement.
Dickinson the romantic
The writer attempts to determine Emily Dickinson's participation in an 18th-century as well as 19th-century British and American stance on experience. He sees her as part of a tradition, therefore, that tries to prove on the pulses not only knowledge of the truth but also belief in values. He challenges those critics who see her late romanticism as evincing anxiety about high romanticism or prefiguring the paralyzed skepticism of deconstruction. Instead, he finds that she sustains a dialectic that yields spiritually as well as naturally experiential insights of the same sort that are to be found at the heart of British romanticism in particular and of Anglo-American romanticism in general.
Emily Dickinson's Poetics of Translation
Emily Dickinson: what is called thinking at the edge of chaos?
The article is concerned with the problem of tradition. In what tradition should we place ourselves in order to understand Emily Dickinson a little better? For a number of reasons, empiricism is suggested and redefined, as there are at least two conceptions available (Locke's and Hume's). It is argued that this approach helps us account for the way Dickinson uses language in order to go as far as words will let her go. Can empiricism and Emily Dickinson enable us to see what the self, or identity-for want of better words-are? The poem 'It was not Death, for I stood up' is studied in detail.
Emily Dickinson and the Limits of Logic: The Example of Her Puritan Heritage
“A Word made Flesh is seldom”
This poem alludes both to Jesus as the incarnation of God and to poetry — “words that breathe distinctly” and do not die, and are available to every person, in spite of the restrictions of institutional religion. Dickinson pictures the poetic experience as similar to the sacrament of communion. The experience strengthens, even if it must be done in “ecstasies of stealth.” For Dickinson, in this and some other poems, love of God and Jesus is contained in her love of language and poetry.

The American renaissance in New England. Fourth series by Wesley T. Mott, editor
Call Number: 928.1 D56 v.243
ISBN: 0787646601
Publication Date: 2001
Includes entry for Dickinson p.103-127, with photos, bibliographies and references.
An Emily Dickinson encyclopedia by Jane Donahue Eberwein, editor
Call Number: 811 D56ze
ISBN: 0313297819
Publication Date: 1998

Loaded gun [videorecording] : life, and death, and Dickinson by produced by Steve Gentile and James Wolpaw ; written and directed by James Wolpaw ; produced in association with the Independent Television Service and the Center for Independent Documentary.
Call Number: 811 L78
ISBN: 9780972708814
Publication Date: 2002
"A filmmaker who is stumped but captivated by Emily Dickinson's poetry searches for 'flashes of insight' into the elusive poet beyond those offered by his lively but traditional interviews with experts such as actress Julie Harris and U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins. So he turns to shrinks, a sensitive, a stand-up comic, a rock band, even a fan with an Emily tattoo across his back. Still unsatisfied, he holds auditions in which dozens of actresses recite poems and improvise Dickinsonian answers to questions about God, and Death, and Love. Rising above all the speculation and spectacle are varied readings of over 50 Dickinson poems."--Container.

Dickinson, Emily, 1830-1886. Herbarium, circa 1839-1846

Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium: A Beautiful Digital Edition of Collection of Pressed Plants & Flowers
Assembled in a patterned green album bought from the Springfield stationer G. & C. Merriam, the herbarium contains 424 specimens arranged on 66 leaves and delicately attached with small strips of paper. The specimens are either native plants, plants naturalized to Western Massachusetts, where Dickinson lived, or houseplants. Every page is accompanied by a transcription of Dickinson’s neat handwritten labels, which identifies each plant by its scientific name.

ENG 388 - Living Traditions: Emily Dickinson

The writing as well as the person of Emily Dickinson has come to stand for poetry at its most essential and potent: life itself distilled to the bones, the human being as solitary, alert, and alive. Famously reclusive yet fiercely committed, Dickinson wrote poems that on one hand are personal and private, concerned with domestic details of ordinary life, but which hum at the limits of syntax and grammar and diction, with the mysteries that hover beyond the reach of direct expression. In this course, we situate Dickinson within her relationship to American Puritanism and Romanticism as well as within the lyric tradition that stretches from Pindar and Sappho to Levertov and Ashbery. Dickinson explores with wit and courage the deepest perplexities of her age and thereby demonstrates in general the possibilities of poetry-especially poetry of the avant garde-to disrupt the status quo, even as it clarifies and consoles.

Online Resources

Academy of American Poets
Gives information about Dickinson's life and her poetry.
Emily Dickinson: Links, Bibliographies, and Information
Part of a larger project maintained by Donna Campbell who is an Assistant Professor of English at Washington State University.
Emily Dickinson Archives Online
A repository for the study of resources related to Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson Museum
Dickinson's home in Amherst is now a museum. This site also offers links to explanations of her poetry and her work habits.
Morgan Library & Museum (NY): The Life and Poetry of Emily Dickinson
Listen to a selection of the poems, as read by contemporary poet Lee Ann Brown,
Poetry Foundation - Emily Dickinson
Offers an excellent description of Dickinson's life and poetry. It is especially good in explaining how Dickinson's education, family and reading of other poets influenced her writing.