Well, all joking and mockery aside, I feel like there are quite a few topics that I could pursue. However, there are two topics sticking out in my head.
1) Barriers...including both physical barriers (such as planks, doors, fences) and distance barriers (oceans, heavens). When doing research for fascicle 11.
- Often she has the characters make a choice. They can not straddle the barrier, they can not have their cake and eat it too.
- Though this theme is prevalent in fascicle 11, it is also very prevalent in the body of her larger works. For example in "I Felt a Funeral in my Brain" she "felt a plank of reason broke"
- When reading "My Emily Dickinson" by Susan Howe, she brings up an interesting point about Emily's upbringing in New England. She is not too far removed from the original calvinists who originally settled there. Their view of God is very strict and must have been influential in the barrier themes. Your are either saved, or you are not. You are either chosen, or you are not. There is no middle ground.
- Does Emily feel like there isn't even a choice for her? Are the only barriers God related?
- In her own life, she created her own barriers and writes in her letters about how being inside is just as much as an adventure for her. She finds solace being behind her closed door...however, she chooses not to open it...
- I was thinking about incorporating this into my first topic because she usually places her scientific language in a poem so that it is in stark contrast with religion.
- Could science be considered a barrier? Or perhaps part of my "either or" theme in my first topic?
Happy research everyone!
I really like the barriers idea. I think it would be especially cool if you looked at the different ways in which Dickinson applies barriers to the person which are usually in the larger world, and vice versa. For example, in 355, she talks about her life being "shaven" and "fitted to a frame," and "could not breathe without a key."
ReplyDeleteI also like the idea of barriers. There certainly seems to be enough of them in her writing, and they must have some meanings for her, or she wouldn't have talked about them.
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