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Emily Dickinson - Style, Theme and Contextual factors
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Quick revision notes on all you need to know for Emily Dickinson poetry. Notes on poetry style, themes and context vital to a level and gcse essay responses
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Style:- Use of partial/slant rhyme which could reflect uncertainty, fracturedness and
brooding quality of her mind – no complete/clear answer
- Symbolism/Allegory/Imagery all used to convey the ideas, concerns, themes and
thoughts. Nature specifically is paramount to the meaning of her poems
- Ability to blend the homely and exalted, the trivial and the precious in her poetry
- Use of humour – sarcasm and scepticism to communicate the urgency of her doubts
and uncertainties
- Claims her poems are not narrated by herself but a supposed person
- Pathos and irony
- her ability to describe abstract concepts with concrete images.
- Hymn meter: Common meter/ ballad meter usually used (think amazing grace)
- Dashes and capitalisation
- The Dickinsonian dash can be seen, perhaps, as both bridge and river, both
connector and divider of the words and clauses. It adds a liveliness and fluidity to the
syntax, being somehow less ‘settled’ than conventional modes, and the effect can be
to revitalize the language.
Themes:
- Life, Death, Afterlife, Despair, Hope, Faith, Religion, Deception, Transition, Doubt and
Uncertainty, Perspective, Identity, Medicine, Nature, Mankind, Science, God, Poetry
(meaning and power), Suffering, Growth
Contextual factors:
- Was she hiding a secret, an illness?
- Did not have the faith that the rest of her family did
- Categorised as having ‘no hope’
- Described by Higgins as articulate and leading an abnormal life
- Her nephew struggled with epilepsy
- Austin committed adultery – cheated on Susan Dickinson with Mrs Mabel Todd a
newcomer to Amherst. She was first flirting with Ned, Austin’s 20 year old son, and
then Austin became a rival and loved her for the rest of his life. Emily Dickinson took
a stand against her brothers adultery unlike her sister Lavinia
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