Overcoming Oneself as Subject in Dickinson's Poetry

Abstract

Critics have discovered values and meanings Emily poems by placing them certain historical/cultural contexts or interpretive/theoretical frameworks. Among these contexts, major criticism suggests preference historicism. Such preference is demonstrated two trends of thought: first, after the dominance of modernist interpretation of work, it is time to examine its potential misplacement and place back to original historical and literary backgrounds; second, as different critical discourses should help bring out different signification of work, it is thus productive to explore connection with discourses of philosophy, science, or religion of time. DOMINANT HISTORICISM While calling modernist since met the aesthetic expectations of the modern era, Cristanne Miller nonetheless focuses discussion mainly on how contemporaries (such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Julia Ward Howe, etc.) had influenced both The Sound of Shifting Paradigms and Immediate U.S. Literary Predecessors. Mary Loeffelholz also argues that nineteenth-century American poetry always stands in place as background to and that the cultural work of the nineteenth century has most often been assumed as known than read for its possible surprises [...] (Dickinson's 'Decoration' 664, 669). Loeffelholz's purpose is to bring this foreground/background into question because it denies the two-directional influence and interaction between and those of contemporaries, such as Thomas Wentworth Higginson discussed Dickinson's 'Decoration' and Josiah Holland Really Indigenous Productions. However, if placing modernist context is problematic because it disregards interaction with contemporaries, it might be equally problematic to place the historical context of the nineteenth century without considering how might resist the historical influence of the nineteenth century. In other words, Loeffelholz's questioning of the foreground/background might end up being reversal of the model and not touched upon the inherent controversy of the relation between and its external contexts. On the second trend of thought, critics aim for discovering different through diverse critical discourses but still stay within the historical boundary mostly. What could be more exemplary of this trend of thought than Eliza Richards' statement, while quoting Loeffelholz, that historicism is certainly an au courant current studies today introduction of the book Emily Context (5). Jed Deppman is one of the few who attempt to explore the possibility of philosophical signification work. In Trying to Think with Emily Dickinson, he discovers some potential resonance between and ideas of some philosophers/theorists such as Bacon, Locke, Kant, Lyotard, Nietzsche, Nancy, Richard Rorty, Gianni Vattimo, and others. While Deppman recognizes that his idea of 'postmodern' may suggest to some readers, he nonetheless claims that historical context is absolutely required for one's best reading (10). In the review of Deppman's book, Melanie Hubard points out that ahistoricism is a weakness Deppman's approach because those postmodern thinkers are quite alien to Dickinson (no). It is intriguing that historical context seems to easily grant the legitimacy of one's critical approach as if the link between text and its historical context is simply natural and nothing arbitrary. Even though Deppman's approach is ahistorical its nature, he often finds recourse historicity. On the one hand, Deppman speculate[s] on sources of thinking (18). On the other hand, he claims that her reworking can actually predict the modernist ideas of Lyotard and Nancy (185). …