English 100

Junior Seminar: Emily Dickinson


Section Semester Instructor Time Location Course Areas
10 Spring 2008 Shoptaw, John
TTh 12:30-2 259 Dwinelle Junior Seminars

Book List
Dickinson, E.: The Poems of Emily Dickinson,Selected Letters; Habegger, A.: My Wars are Laid Away in Books; Course Reader
Description

This is an intensive course in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. We will learn how to read (to describe and interpret) her poems, along with her letters and a biography, deeply but also broadly throughout her career. Topics include early poetry; poetic rhythm; figuration; definition and riddle; death, religion, and nature as topic and as figure; love poetry and poetic seduction; emotion & suspense; gender and sexuality; self-definition; biography; manuscript poem packets; poems revisiting poems; letters and/as poems; contemporary history (e.g., Civil War); contemporary poetry (e.g., Emerson, Robert & E.B. Browning); late poetry; reception and influence. There will be a few exercises, a shorter and a longer paper.


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