Customer Reviews

Emily Dickinson: Monarch of Perception

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Mr Mitchell has penned a book which will be seen as a watershed in literary criticism. "The Monarch of Perception" is a truly perceptive piece. It uncovers many a stone in the field of Emily Dickinson studies, and is not afraid to look at what lies beneath. For anyone who wishes to learn about not only Emily Dickinson, but also America, and even the world, this book is a must. Buy it!

Professor Mitchell's book is pretentious, as one reviewer here has already said, and inaccurate in the way he pretends to deal with other Dickinson critics, as well as in the way he deals with class in 19th-century America. He pulls work by others out of context, tears it to shreds, and then refuses to take a position himself (except to say that Dickinson was upper-class and was something of a snob). He also has an anachronistic view of class and writes as if class in the late 20th century is the same as class in the 19th. Pity his poor students if he is distributing this sort of misinformation. On top of everything, this book is boring.

Mr. Mitchell's work is the kind of speculative fiction that passes as literary criticism today. This book is a tedious, pretentious piece of claptrap that won't even delight other Dickenson scholars.