The Poetry of Emily Dickinson - (Readers' Guides to Essential Criticism) by Victoria N Morgan

Book Synopsis

Taking readers through the various stages of criticism of Emily Dickinson's poetry, this guide identifies both the essential critical texts and the key debates within them. The texts chosen for discussion represent the canonical readings which have typically shaped the area of Dickinson studies throughout the twentieth- and twenty-first century and provide a lens through which to view current critical trends.

Chapters focus on style and meaning, gender and sexuality, history and race, religion and hymn culture, and performance and popular culture. In all, this guide serves as a user-friendly reference tool to the vast body of criticism on Dickinson to date by suggesting formative starting points and underlining essential critical highlights.

It provides students and scholars of Dickinson with a sense of where these critical texts can be placed in relation to one another, as well as an understanding of pivotal moments within the history of reception of Dickinson from late nineteenth-century reviews up to some of the definitive critical interventions of the twenty-first century.

Review Quotes

"Morgan expertly guides readers through the history of Dickinson criticism and provides them with key insights that help illuminate the most pertinent issues and recurring debates that have shaped and continue to shape Dickinson's reputation." --Dr Páraic Finnerty, Reader in English and American Literature, University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom

About the Author

Dr Victoria N. Morgan is a researcher and scholar of nineteenth-century women's writing, hymnology, religion, and devotional verse. She has published various books and articles in these areas and is the author of Emily Dickinson and Hymn Culture: Tradition and Experience (2010; 2016) and co-editor of Shaping Belief: Culture, Politics and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Writing (2008). She has taught widely on English and American Literature at the University of Liverpool, Liverpool Hope University, and most recently at the University of East Anglia, U.K.