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THEMES
- Emily Dickinson
- her thoughts, experiences, beliefs
- no comments on social or political events
- Civil War?!
- "He Put the Belt around My
Life"
- oppressive male (father, husband)
- * see Kate Chopin “Desiree's Baby” “Story of an Hour”
- * see “A Rose for Emily”
- "Much Madness is Diviniest
Sense"
- nonconformity:
- dangers of being different = jail, psych ward
- Galileo, Darwin
- “I’m Nobody! Who are you?”
- this poem = defense of private, secluded, insular
life
- privacy
- personal & spiritual privacy
- this poem = critique of those writers/poets who
favor celebrity
- sell-outs
- sold souls for fame
- Anti-Conformity –
- don’t want to be like everyone else
- better to be a “Nobody” than a “Somebody”
- celebrity, the in-crowd (paparazzi)
- see also ee cummings’ “anyone lived in a
pretty how town” poem
- "Because I could not stop for
death"
- calm acceptance of death:
- no more frightening than an unexpected gentleman
caller
- her garments = for a wedding, not a funeral
- weddings & death = new beginnings, new
"life", new start
- grave = “house” : death as natural, homey
- see TRANSCENDENTALISM -->
- nonconformity,
anti-Conformity
- road less traveled
- subjectivity, the inner
world
- death
- love
- pain, separation
- nature
- God, religion
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THEMES
- *TRANSCENDENTALISM:
- death = natural part of life cycle, part
of endless cycle of nature
- began as a reform movement in the Unitarian Church
- more of the in-dwelling of God (God
inside man)
- and importance of intuitive thought
- “understanding” = apprehend truth through
senses
- compares, contrives, adds, argues
- --> alters Truth
- “reason” = higher, more intuitive form of
perception
- the soul does: perceive (its is pure vision),
unadulterated, unchanged by senses (Truth)
- the soul does not: reason or prove
- --> changes, alters Truth
- *Reason over
Understanding
- fewer creeds & rituals
- soul of human =
- soul of world
- contains what the world contains
- part is related to the whole (syndoche)
- --> analogies:
- perceiving correspondences (METAPHORS)
- --> Nature = emblematic:
- “Every natural fact is a symbol of
some spiritual fact.” (Romanticism)
- --> OVERSOUL:
- resides in the soul, “the wise
silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and
particle is related.”
- --> Organicism: the circle of life, cycles
- human nature =
- essentially good;
- if left in a natural state would seek the good;
- civilization = blame for man’s corruption
- Trans. then opposes Neoclassicism’s idea
that society saves man
- steady DEGENERATION of man from childhood by
civilization
- --> CHILDHOOD
= perfect, ideal time
- philosophy that values the
intuitive & spiritual over the empirical,
senses
- reject Lockean empiricism, 18thC rationalism
- reject NE Calvinism
- want the mystical aspects of New England
Calvinism
- **back to Jonathan Edwards’ “divine
& supernatural light” that is imparted
immediately to the soul by the spirit of God
- Emerson’s “Universal Being”
& “transparent eyeball”
& “part or parcel of God”
- the in-dwelling God
- inspiration =
- from God, directly OR from his part of the spiritual
world;
- not from reason or five senses
- perpetual inspiration, power of the will, birthright to
universal good
- search for universal truths
- immortality, God, faith, man’s place in the universe
- poet = prophet, redeemer, teacher
- English Romanticism, German Idealism
- (wsu.edu)
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