Emily Dickinson in the Postprint Era

Abstract

For over a century, the editing of Emily Dickinson has become one of the most controversial topics among literary scholars. In the 1890s, the first editions of Dickinson’s poems established her as a major American poet of the nineteenth century, but those editions were also the first instigators of her mystification, they introduced Dickinson as a secluded woman and set the foundation for a large tradition of bibliographical criticism. It is not until the 1930s that certain poets started to take Dickinson seriously as a poet. In the 1950s, although the New Critical methodology opened a new era of Dickinson criticism, the tendency towards bibliographical criticism continued until 1970s. In the 1980s, R.W. Franklin’s edition brought the reader closer to Dickinson’s process of writing. This edition also highlights the relevance of materiality in Dickinson’s work. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to compare and analyze various editions of Dickinson’s poetry and to determine the degree to which material changes in the poems have affected the meaning of the poems and our understanding of the poet herself. This thesis is concerned about the importance of materiality in Dickinson’s poetry and how her work has been reinterpreted in the postprint era