The "Earth" element in Emily Dickinson's poetry

Abstract

Gaston Bachelard (1884 – 1962) and Carl Gustav Jung (1875 – 1962) may have had similar ground for their theories about the images in human imagination, the ground that originated and was shaped very long ago in humankind’s history. However, Bachelard and Jung are principally dissimilar about their treatment of the notion of imagination. While the concept of “collective unconscious” shapes Jung’s explication, Bachelard confirms that it is essentially the elements of the universe, namely earth, water, fire, and air, that generate dreams and mental images. Those substances enable writers to create meaningful and timeless images, without which their symbols are but perishable and vain. He named it material imagination, or imaginative analysis of material. On studying Emily Dickinson’s life and poetry, I have come to acknowledge her talent in poetry as having grown on the substance of “earth.” This essay examines and analyzes her poetry under the theory of material imagination by Bachelard, thus arriving at the conclusion that the element “earth” is visibly present in her life and imagination, making her poetry heavily affected by that ancient element.