  | ||
 Editor: Steven G. Kellman ISBN: 1-58765-285-4 List price: $499     |
|
 
Magill's Survey of American Literature offers profiles of major U.S. and Canadian writers accompanied by analyses of their significant works in fiction, drama, poetry, and nonfiction. Below is an excerpt from the Survey's essay on Emily Dickinson.Emily Dickinson The poet's surviving family members share some of the responsibility for creating the image of "the white nun of Amherst." This epithet refers to her habit of dressing exclusively in white after 1861. That she did this out of despair from some impossible love, either for young Ben Newton (her father's law clerk) or for Charles Wadsworth, a married Philadelphia minister with a family, is unlikely. It is possible, as has been suggested, that Wadsworth's acceptance of a pastorate in San Francisco was an attempt to avoid temptation, but contemporary critics generally argue against the image of a Dickinson desolate because of a lost love. Johnson assigns most of Dickinson's bridal poems to the 1860's, based on this unhappy romance, but one can easily question the Johnson chronology. If correct, it would mean that Dickinson composed twothirds of her entire output of verse in eight years and an astonishing number (681) in the years from 1862 to 1864. Dickinson family members recalled, destroyed, and sometimes severely edited much of the poet's personal correspondence. "The belle" or "queen recluse" personae they created by default were infinitely preferable at the close of the nineteenth century to the rebellious, unconventional, but thwarted genius that she actually was. - Robert J. Forman |
 |
SALEM PRESS, INC. · 131 North El Molino Avenue · Pasadena · CA 91101 © Salem Press, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |