Experience and Faith : the Late-Romantic Imagination of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson (1830-86) recasts British-Romantic themes of natural and spiritual perception for an American audience. Her poems of science and technology reflect her faith in experience. Her lyrics about natural history build on this empiricism and develop her commitment to natural religion. Her poems of revealed religion constitute her experience of faith. Thus Dickinson stands on the experiential common ground between empiricism and evangelicalism in Romantic Anglo-America. Her double perspective parallels the implicit androgyny of her nineteenth-century feminism. Her counterintuitive combination of natural models with spiritual metaphors champions immortality. The experience/faith dialectic of her Late-Romantic imagination forms the heart of her legacy. In 'Experience and faith', Richard E. Brantley argues that the empirical/evangelical dialectic of Romantic Anglo-America culminated in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. As her poems of science and technology reflected her faith in experience, and her lyrics about natural history developed her commitment to natural religion, so too do her poems of revealed religion constitute her experience of faith. By situating Dickinson within the Wesleyan tradition and an Anglo-American context, the author provides a way of rethinking the connections between Dickinson's poetry and her religious thought and experience Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction....Pages 1-16 Distinguishing Mode....Pages 17-30 Experimental Trust....Pages 31-77 Nature Methodized....Pages 78-115 Romantic to Modern Arc....Pages 116-164 Practical Conspectus....Pages 165-189 Conclusion....Pages 190-212 Back Matter....Pages 213-275