A Modern Myth: Emily Dickinson and the Everyday Hero
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date published 12/10/2007
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SummaryOne can wonder whether William Shakespeare’s sonnets would be memorized in every classroom across the Western world if they were anything other sonnets. So inseparable are the two ideas that they barely have separate identities: Shakespeare’s sonnets are accepted without question, and most analytical commentaries approach from the angle of content rather than form. His sonnets just are, and one rarely questions the “why” of his sonnets. Sadly, Emily Dickinson has been equally discriminated, passed off as a “genre” poet: as Shakespeare is the sonnet, Dickinson is the ballad. Yet such a generalization is destructively misleading. Dickinson is other forms as well; she is even poetic freedom. She is not defined so easily, and neither are her poems. And when she does use the ballad form, that very use must be explored as thoroughly as the meaning behind her words, for, to steal the cliché, there is a method to her madness.
Table of Contents
- One can wonder whether William Shakespeare's sonnets would be memorized in every classroom across the Western world if they were anything other sonnets.
- However, even methods can be misinterpreted.
- Emily Dickinson still finds room for her individuality within the constrained space of the ballad stanzas.
- While using such grammatical characteristics allows Emily Dickinson to establish her individuality within the ballad form, she is not imposed to breaking with form when it benefits the emotion or image she is hoping to convey.
- This act of picking apart a poem, of finding kinks in the armor of form, are often important in discovering the motivations of the poet.
- There is an important distinction to be made between ballad forms and ballads themselves.
- Dickinson's journey in 'Because I Could Not Stop for Death' is fantastical, magical, beyond physical comprehension, much like the journeys of those epic heroes who were stronger and braver than any man or woman who came before.
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