國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Thus, with regard to definitions of the term “dream” to which former critical readings might pay less attention, I would like to propose a reading of Dickinson’s dream imagery which entails a postmodernist reader-centred perspective. To resolve questions left by previous studies, I also intend to explore in her poetry the poet’s delicate concerns over human society which might promise a better comprehensive understanding of Emily Dickinson’s poems.
I. Literature Review
Concerning its analytical scope, this thesis focuses on three main fields of critical reception on Emily Dickinson’s poetry: essays about her concept of dreams;
about her attitude towards society; and about her perspective on paradise/heaven. The problem of dream in Dickinson’s writing, for sure, is a top priority that is taken into account. Dickinson’s literary treatment of dreams, among others, is always a
provoking topic that intrigues and, perhaps sometimes, also bothers a great majority of earnest readers. Just like many of her other topics, this curious dream-issue indeed not only offers fuel for igniting numerous critical passions but also challenges an attempt of theme search dauntingly with interpretive vagueness. As David Porter suggests, it is enigma in Dickinson’s texts that immerses many readers, and readers, while encountering the poems for locating a certain theme, are often overwhelmingly
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
captured by enormous unexplainable and unmanageable mysteries through their textual absorption (196). Roland Hagenbüchle in his “Dickinson and Literary Theory”
in The Emily Dickinson Handbook also recognises indefiniteness and indeterminacy in the poet’s writing. Yet, though positing the richness and also teasingly uncertainty of meanings, Hagenbüchle, by contrast, regards it rather positively as where “a sense of humility, admiration, and wonder” thrives in Dickinson’s poems (382). With the critical voices, there seems also inevitable indeterminacy which prevails within her designation of dream imagery and which must complicate a reading of dream.
With respect to current trends in the studies of Dickinson, particularly in terms of the dream subject, a promising discovery of theories about dreaming might be found in Páraic Finnerty’s compelling article, “A Dickinson Reverie: The Worm, the Snake, Marvel, and Nineteenth-century Dreaming.” Finnerty focuses on the notions of dreaming proliferated in the nineteenth century and unfolds an emphasis on the
prophetic nature of dreams. The divination of the future relies on the compulsion to narrate the visions of a dreamer during sleep. As “a form of demonic possession,” as Finnerty writes, in literary works a dreamer’s dream seems typically able to trap and posit its dreamer in a compulsive circumstance that he/she becomes “compelled to describe rather than understand the unfathomable phenomena encountered there” (96).
The dreamer, in this respect, appears to be considered a prophet-like character. This
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
mythical characteristic of the dreamer as a prophet is examined by the nineteenth-century dream theorists such as John Bonner and James J. Belcher, both of whom pinpoint supernatural experiences brought from dreams of prophecy. According to Finnerty, Bonner outlines the popular idea that “the dreaming mind moved beyond the physical world and its body and communicated with the metaphysical universe, thereby receiving ominous messages of warning or ethical instruction, thereby gaining foresight into future events” (97). As Finnerty further summarizes, Belcher locates more active abilities of a dreamer to recognize “preternatural warnings regarding coming disasters” and change future events (97). In this way of looking at dreams, it is clear that dreams are treated not only as supernatural access to the metaphysical world with which a prophet-dreamer is able to communicate. Dreams also reveal protective significance of warning, thereby avoiding destructive disasters.
Through his exploration, Finnerty tries to locate Dickinson’s poetic engagement with the theoretical conventions about dreams and dreaming in the nineteenth century. As he observes, “Dickinson’s dream poems in general emphasize the prudent activity of dreaming as preferable to corporeal experience” (108). The world of dream, for Dickinson, seems more preferable, compared with normal everyday life. John S. Mann similarly argues that, “in the universe of her poems, dreams are the obverse of reality, which paradoxically deepen her understanding of it”
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
(qtd. in Finnerty 108). It would seem that Dickinson’s dream poetry actually exhibits her deep concern about reality which is arguably viewed as the opposite of dream.
Another field of critical reception concerns Emily Dickinson’s view on the social. Though Dickinson is widely recognised as a poet who secludes herself away from society, a vast body of her poems is in fact involved with a certain keen sensitivity and profundity that critiques and questions the stroke of society. Many critics also observe such a critical awareness implicit in her poems and tend to explore the magnitude of it. Kenneth Stocks, Audrey Curtis, and Christopher Benfey, for instance, offer an exhaustive explanation of how the poet stands as socially devoted and with her poems textually performs as actively voiced. Of most significance, with these critics, many of Dickinson’s poems are in fact imperatively unfolded not only as imbued with doubts against the social, but also as evidences of a quest for a certain degree of individualism. As Curtis and Stocks similarly claim, Emily Dickinson is a poet who takes pains to displace in her poems a distrust of what seems generally correct and normal from the side of a majority (Stocks 86; Curtis 784-6), and in Benfey’s reading, a sense of uncertainty on the social is even intensified, as several of her poems investigate the expressiveness of human beings and the presence of others (1-8).
Here, throughout these essays that contribute to Dickinson’s social insight, it
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
is seen that critics mostly position the poet in a certain dual relation between herself and others. As Rachel Nicole Tie suggests in her discussion on the question of normality and abnormality, the “eccentricity” of the poet is apparently opposed to what a society conceptually accepts as general and normal (641). This social separation between the poet and society, as Jaji Crocker Hammer sees, even
disassociates her from conventional customs that advocate social involvement and put into practice a certain degree of disconnection sensible in much of her poetry (216).
Indeed, it is recognised that in Dickinson’s poetry, oppositions, the binary ones in particular, are fairly of much significance, and in many ways they hardly can be belittled.
Lastly, the thesis considers Dickinson’s images of paradise/heaven highlighted by several critical essays. Throughout the oeuvre of Emily Dickinson, the topic of paradise/heaven is indeed dominantly visible, and many critics tend to shed careful light on the importance of this distinctive concept around her poems. Robert Weisbuch, for instance, in his reading of the poem “I dwell in Possibility” (J 657), bestows upon the image of “paradise” the metaphorical testament of “possibilities”
which a poet can strive to “gather” from his/her realm of poetry. (197). Judith Farr in her chapter “Gardening in Eden” of her book The Gardens of Emily Dickinson suggests the glorification of “Paradise” in the plain of “Garden of Eden” and
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
identifies Emily Dickinson as a “new Eve” who should reside in “Paradise” (74).
Magdalena Zapedowska and Barton Levi St. Armand, in addition, also critically associate the images of “paradise” and “heaven” with the image of home. They not only present the dwelling of joy and ecstasy (Zapedowska 86-88), but also unfold a certain domestic, private domain which combats and supersedes any other socially dominant dogmas in order to claim her personal individuality (St. Armand 129, 131, 136). In Brian F. McCabe’s reading, this dimension of individuality that the
“paradise/heaven” can indicate in ways also displays her withdrawal from any
orthodoxy (439). With these readings of paradise/heaven, it is seen that, for Dickinson critics and readers, what often constitutes a paradise and heaven is usually tokens of certain idealism, which to some extent is pregnant with blissful thinking and even bits of personal satisfaction.