Taking readers through the various stages of criticism of Emily Dickinson's poetry, this guide identifies both the essential critical texts and the key debates within them. The texts chosen for discussion represent the canonical readings which have typically shaped the area of Dickinson studies throughout the twentieth- and twenty-first century and provide a lens through which to view current critical trends.
Chapters focus on style and meaning, gender and sexuality, history and race, religion and hymn culture, and performance and popular culture. In all, this guide serves as a user-friendly reference tool to the vast body of criticism on Dickinson to date by suggesting formative starting points and underlining essential critical highlights.
It provides students and scholars of Dickinson with a sense of where these critical texts can be placed in relation to one another, as well as an understanding of pivotal moments within the history of reception of Dickinson from late nineteenth-century reviews up to some of the definitive critical interventions of the twenty-first century.
Reviews
Morgan expertly guides readers through the history of Dickinson criticism and provides them with key insights that help illuminate the most pertinent issues and recurring debates that have shaped and continue to shape Dickinsons reputation. * Dr Pαraic Finnerty, Reader in English and American Literature, University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom *
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Assisting readers of Emily Dickinsons poetry by taking them through the various stages of criticism on her work, this book identifies and introduces both the essential critical texts and the key debates within them.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Biographies and publication
1.1 Biographers
1.2 Dickinson as poet: Self-publication and early publication
2. Style and Meaning
2.1 Early criticism
2.2 Later revaluations
3 The female tradition, gender and sexuality
3.1 The female tradition
3.2 Writing the body
3.3 Queering Dickinson
4 History, Civil War and race
4.1 Historicizing Dickinson
4.2 The US Civil War
4.3 Dickinson, ethnicity and race
5 Religion and hymn culture
5.1 Rejecting orthodoxy
5.2 Religion and aesthetics
5.3 Dickinson and hymnody
6 Performance and reception
6.1 Performance in Dickinson's Poetry
6.2 Dickinson and popular Culture
6.3 Digital Dickinson and international reception
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Dr Victoria N. Morgan is a researcher and scholar of nineteenth-century womens writing, hymnology, religion, and devotional verse. She has published various books and articles in these areas and is the author of Emily Dickinson and Hymn Culture: Tradition and Experience (2010; 2016) and co-editor of Shaping Belief: Culture, Politics and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Writing (2008). She has taught widely on English and American Literature at the University of Liverpool, Liverpool Hope University, and most recently at the University of East Anglia, U.K.
