Form-of-Life, Intensity, and the Inhuman:Universal Singularity in Emily Dickinson's Poems

• Main Authors: Lee, Nai-Hao, 李廼澔
• Other Authors: Frank Stevenson
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/ra4p47

博士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 104 === This dissertation sets out to interpret some of Emily Dickinson's more "difficult" poems via the conception of universal singularity, and more specifically the theories of form-of-life, intensity, and the inhuman. The "universal" does not mean "general" in this dissertation but rather what is absolute and without cause, and singularity means that which occurs (as a sort of event) in the perception or experience of readers when they read Dickinson's poems. The dissertation attempts to show why people, especially those trained in critical theory, find Dickinson’s poetry so "different." Death, a recurrent theme in her poems, is in effect the transitional point between the familiar and either immortality or nothingness. Helen McNeil believes Dickinson’s poems suggest that the poet did not fit the received model of "literary greatness"--which was no doubt too restrictive. In fact, I believe Dickinson’s poetry bears a close relation to, and in some ways seems even to predict, some of the key themes in contemporary literary theory. Indeed, to read her poetry closely is “to experience gaps and silences in the existing models” and even "to redefine these models." Therefore, I am looking at how Dickinson mobilizes, in her poems, universal singularity against abstraction and communitarianism, and seeking to show how from these poems emerges literary "truth".