Emily Dickinson and Her Contemporaries: Women's Verse in America, 1820-1885 [Paperback]

Elizabeth A. Petrino (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 1998

For many years, Emily Dickinson's cryptic verse was viewed as an isolated phenomenon, the poet herself an enigma whose motivations and influences were shrouded in mystery. Eschewing such stereotypes, Elizabeth A. Petrino places the Belle of Amherst within the context of other nineteenth-century women poets and examines the feminist implications of their work. Dickinson and contemporaries like Lydia Sigourney, Louisa May Alcott, and Helen Hunt Jackson developed in their writing a rhetoric of duplicity that enabled them to question conventional values but still maintain the propriety necessary to achieve publication. To demonstrate these strategies, Petrino examines both Dickinson's poetry and a range of "women's" genres, from the child elegy to the discourse of flowers. She also enlists contemporary magazines, unpublished professional correspondence, even gravestone inscriptions and posthumous paintings of children to explain what Petrino calls the most significant fact of Dickinson's literary biography, her decision not to publish. In the end, we see how, "these poets create a kind of cultural palimpsest, writing and rewriting central tropes about death, marriage and motherhood, and the power and function of consolatory verse, barely visible under the erasures of literary history. Set against a new and recently recovered tradition of female verse writing, Dickinson's central place in the canon and her position as a consummate artist are clearly affirmed."

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Petrino (English, Wake Forest Univ.) examines the poetry of Dickinson in the context of other 19th-century female poets such as Helen Hunt Jackson, Lydia Sigourney, Louisa May Alcott, and Julia Ward Howe. While previous works, such as Cheryl Walker's The Nightingale's Burden: Women Poets and American Culture Before 1900 (Indiana Univ., 1982) have discussed the generic structure of women's poetry and the relation between the poets and the patriarchal publishing world, Petrino discusses how Dickinson, rather than being separate from her contemporaries, actually used the same poetic themes deemed acceptable to women writers but differed in creating "a new powerful means of expression within the prescribed limits." Dickinson also differed from other female poets in her refusal to allow her work to be published. In addition to an in-depth analysis of the constraints of publication, Petrino also examines the poetic themes and conventions used by Dickinson and her contemporaries, such as mourning and death, floral language, and geographic imagery. Highly recommended for all academic libraries and public libraries with a strong American literature collection.?Kim Woodbridge, "The Scientist," Philadelphia
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Publisher

6 x 9 trim. 5 illus. 4 figs. LC 97-44600

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Product Details

• Paperback: 252 pages
• Publisher: UPNE; 1st edition (May 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874519071
• ISBN-13: 978-0874519075
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,229,069 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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