Emily Dickinson in her private bubble : poems, letters and the condition of presence

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to show that Emily Dickinson was not concerned with the publication of her poems and she herself decided to withdraw from the outside world, a decisive event which contributed to the original production of her almost eighteen hundred poems and over eleven hundred letters. Emily Dickinson withdrew into her untouched private world – which here is called “the bubble” – and developed the contemplation process based on the approach of apprehending perceptions which resulted in the instant captions that have enchanted readers. Since her withdrawal was as a result of her own free choice and own writing and living conventions, she was able to be the craftsperson that enjoyed living and writing. Her perception of nature by taking instant captions of the observable natural objects is perfected by the process of contemplation developed in some of her poems. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study comes from the analysis of the complete edition of poems edited by Thomas H. Johnson, the letters edited by Mabel Loomis Todd, and the concept of Nature by Hans Georg Schenk. For the analyses of different issues related to Dickinson’s verses, withdrawal, and apprehension of perceptions, the works of the biographer Richard Benson Sewall and critics such as Albert Gelpi, Barton Levi Armand, Karl Keller, Sharon Cameron, among others, were consulted. This study aims to demonstrate that Emily Dickinson was not concerned with publication and her withdrawal within her bubble was a positive event for her life and poetry. Such conclusion might contribute to enlighten the knowledge about the life and work of such an amazing personage of American Literature and American society as Emily Dickinson has been so far.