Abstract: Why did Emily Dickinson dedicate her life to poetic creation and yet refuse to publish her poems' This is one of the primary quandaries that have fascinated Dickinson's readers and provoked scholars from the moment Dickinson formally emerged in print in 1890, and it is a question that hovers behind current efforts to explain how she came to terms with the closely affiliated attractions of fame and celebrity. The four contributors to this special issue of the Emily Dickinson Journal do not address Dickinson's refusal to publish directly, but they do orient our attention to how she understood the price of fame, most particularly through her own writing and her interest in the lives of writers who assumed the mantle ... Read More Keywords: Dickinson, Emily,; Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Writing in early summer of 1862 to Samuel Bowles during his trip to Europe, Emily Dickinson implored him to offer her respects to her favorite author, Elizabeth Barrett Browning: "Should anybody where you go, talk of Mrs. Browning, you must hear for us - and if you touch her Grave, put one hand on the Head, for me - her unmentioned Mourner -" (L266).1 Although Dickinson's intensely personal response to Barrett Browning's death was deeply felt, it was not unique but rather a phenomenon of nineteenth-century celebrity culture. Inspired by the works of her British and continental contemporaries, including Barrett Browning, George Eliot, the Brontës, and George Sand, Dickinson joined others of her generation in seeking ... Read More Keywords: Dickinson, Emily,; Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In a Northampton church, on July 3, 1851, Emily Dickinson had her most significant known celebrity encounter when she attended, along with her father, mother, and sister, a concert by the soprano Jenny Lind, known as "the Swedish Nightingale." The show was part of Lind's 1850–52 American tour, which had been carefully organized and publicized by the media-savvy commercial impresario P.T. Barnum. Tapping into a desire in the U.S. for popular entertainment and European celebrity, Barnum did everything he could to encourage "Lindomania," which began even before her arrival in New York in September 1850 and continued throughout her tour (see Bechtold 497–8). Like other American newspapers, the Springfield Republican ... Read More Keywords: Dickinson, Emily,; Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Emily Dickinson's careful orchestration of her own April 19, 1886, funeral transformed that event into a concluding artistic gesture, a final elegiac poem, that has much to say about her understanding of literary fame. Her previous statements regarding fame tell us that language powerful enough to achieve immortality did so by entering a life independent of the author, and that she—like many other nineteenth-century writers—preferred to risk obscurity rather than tether her writing to her name and the attendant historical specificity of her biography. In the context of this attitude toward fame, one that so clearly reinforces her well-known aversion to public displays of any sort, Dickinson's decision to include ... Read More Keywords: Dickinson, Emily,; Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: What is it about the places linked to admired writers that so afflicts our imaginations' Why should an author's scene of writing—the room, furnishings, décor, writing surfaces and equipment, vistas, sounds, smells, and even temperature—exert such magnetic attraction' Even more so than sites of epic historic events or houses of indisputable celebrities, writers' spaces stimulate fascination with an individual's act of creativity. The many thousands of visitors to Emily Dickinson's home come in search of a poet whose work, and in some cases life's story, has spoken to them profoundly and personally. A minority are tourists in the reductionist sense of casual pleasure seekers. The majority are fans who, for their own ... Read More Keywords: Dickinson, Emily,; Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: This year's EDIS session at MLA, "Of Strangers is the Earth the Inn," will feature a cluster of papers sounding the intertwining motifs of still life, deep time, and scale for reading Dickinson in the shadow of the anthropocene.Chair: Marta L. Werner, Professor of English, D'Youville CollegePresenters:Isabel Sobral Campos, Assistant Professor of Literature, Dept. of Liberal Studies, Montana TechZachary Tavlin, PhD candidate, Dept. of English, University of WashingtonAmy R. Nestor, Assistant Professor of Literature, Dept. of English, Georgetown University—QatarRespondent:Keith M. Mikos, Lecturer, Dept. of English, DePaul UniversityFor questions about this panel, please contact Marta Werner @ ... Read More Keywords: Dickinson, Emily,; Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, PubDate: 2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00