Working mainly in her bedroom and around her family's home in Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson composed nearly 1800 poems in her lifetime. This body of work, composed by hand on stationery or scrap paper, was not widely known in her lifetime; Dickinson circulated it among friends, or kept it in the bottom drawer of her bureau, for her own enjoyment and for the readers of the future to discover. We will consider Emily Dickinson's poems as brilliantly shaped and executed performances of extreme emotions, from elation to despair; as the creation of a richly elaborated personal religion and homemade philosophy; as the decanting of an individual nineteenth-century woman's ordinary life and experiences, within the patriarchal structures and strictures of the day; as marks on paper, made within a material and household culture; as pathways in a distribution network invented by Dickinson, in opposition to conventional publishing.

Units: 1

Max Enrollment: 40

Prerequisites: None

Instructor: Chiasson

Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature

Typical Periods Offered: Fall

Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall

Notes: