The great American poet Emily Dickinson has long been seen as a figure isolated from her contemporaries and insulated from her surrounding culture. This book attempts to place her texts in their cultural contexts by exploring her attitude towards death, romance, the afterlife, God, nature and art. Using pertinent parallels, analogues, and glosses, it assesses her response to three levels of general culture: elite, popular, and folk. It attempts to find coherence in the entire canon of her poetry, and to reconstruct the lost sensibility that produced it. The author stresses Dickinson's visual acuity and the pictorial elements of her art, taking issue with recent criticism, which has focused on that art's supposed abstraction and 'scenelessness'. At its widest, the book is not only a cultural biography of Emily Dickinson as an American Victorian, but a biography of American Victorian culture itself, where Dickinson emerges as a 'Representative Woman'.
| ISBN: | 9780521339780 |
| Publication date: | 27th June 1986 |
| Author: | Barton Levi St Armand |
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 384 pages |
| Series: | Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: poetry and poets Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 |
The great American poet Emily Dickinson has long been seen as a figure isolated from her contemporaries and insulated from her surrounding culture. This book attempts to place her texts in their cultural contexts by exploring her attitude towards death, romance, the afterlife, God, nature and art. Using pertinent parallels, analogues, and glosses, it assesses her response to three levels of general culture: elite, popular, and folk. It attempts to find coherence in the entire canon of her poetry, and to reconstruct the lost sensibility that produced it. The author stresses Dickinson's visual acuity and the pictorial elements of her art, taking issue with recent criticism, which has focused on that art's supposed abstraction and 'scenelessness'. At its widest, the book is not only a cultural biography of Emily Dickinson as an American Victorian, but a biography of American Victorian culture itself, where Dickinson emerges as a 'Representative Woman'.
Emily Dickinson and Her Culture features in the following genres: Literary studies: poetry and poets, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900
Emily Dickinson and Her Culture is available in Paperback, Hardback
Emily Dickinson and Her Culture was written by Barton Levi St Armand and published by Cambridge University Press
Emily Dickinson and Her Culture has 384 pages
Yes it is part of Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture series
£38.70