Lunacy of Light: Emily Dickinson and the Experience of Metaphor (Ad Feminam) PDF
Preview Lunacy of Light: Emily Dickinson and the Experience of Metaphor (Ad Feminam)
cover next page > title: Lunacy of Light : Emily Dickinson and the Experience of Metaphor Ad Feminam author: Barker, Wendy. publisher: Southern Illinois University Press isbn10 | asin: 0809317079 print isbn13: 9780809317073 ebook isbn13: 9780585106212 language: English subject Dickinson, Emily,--1830-1886--Criticism and interpretation, Feminism and literature--New England--History--19th century, Women and literature--New England--History--19th century, Light and darkness in literature, Metaphor. publication date: 1991 lcc: PS1541.Z5B28 1987eb ddc: 811/.4 subject: Dickinson, Emily,--1830-1886--Criticism and interpretation, Feminism and literature--New England--History--19th century, Women and literature--New England--History--19th century, Light and darkness in literature, Metaphor. cover next page > < previous page page_ii next page > < previous page page_ii next page > Page ii Ad Feminam: Women and Literature Edited by Sandra M. Gilbert Christina Rosetti The Poetry of Endurance By Dolores Rosenblum The Literary Existence of Germaine de Staël By Charlotte Hogsett Margaret Atwood Vision and Forms Edited by Kathryn VanSpanckeren and Jan Garden Castro He Knew She Was Right The Independent Woman in the Novels of Anthony Trollope By Jane Nardin The Woman and the Lyre Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome By Jane McIntosh Snyder Refiguring the Father New Feminist Readings of Patriarchy Edited by Patricia Yaeger and Beth Kowaleski-Wallace Writing in the Feminine Feminism and Experimental Writing in Quebec By Karen Gould < previous page page_ii next page > < previous page page_iii next page > Page iii Lunacy of Light Emily Dickinson and the Experience of Metaphor Wendy Barker Southern Illinois University Press Carbondale and Edwardsville < previous page page_iii next page > < previous page page_iv next page > Page iv To Larry Copyright © 1987 by the Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University All rights reserved Printed in the United Sram of America Edited by Teresa White Designed by Joyce Kachergis Production supervised by Natalia Nadraga Paperback edition, 1991 94 93 92 91 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Barker, Wendy. Lunacy of light: Emily Dickinson and the experience of metaphor / Wendy Barker. p. cm.(Ad feminam) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Dickinson, Emily. 18301886Criticism and interpretation. 2. Feminism and literatureUnited StatesHistory19th century. 3. Light and darkness in literature. 4. Metaphor. I. Title. II. Series. PS1541.Z5B28 1991 811'.4dc20 90-40929 CIP ISBN 0-8093-1707-9 (pbk.) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. < previous page page_iv next page > < previous page page_v next page > Page v Contents Ad Feminam: Women and Literature Sandra M. Gilbert vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction Gender, Hierarchy, and the Great Principle of Light 1 1 Broad Daylight, Cooking Stoves, and the Eye of God The Formation of a Common Metaphor 31 2 Dowering and Depriving The Mighty Sun and His Yellow Whip 51 3 Races Nurtured in the Dark 74 4 Dwelling in Possibility A Light of One's Own 102 5 Enacting the Difference A Whole New Metaphor Beginning Here 134 Notes 189 Index to Dickinson Poems Cited 207 Index 211 < previous page page_v next page > < previous page page_ii next page > < previous page page_vii next page > Page vii Ad Feminam: Women and Literature Ad Hominem: to the man; appealing to personal interests, prejudices, or emotions rather than to reason; an argument ad hominem. American Heritage Dictionary Until quite recently, much literary criticism, like most humanistic studies, has been in some sense constituted out of arguments ad hominem. Not only have examinations of literary history tended to address themselves "to the man"that is, to the identity of what was presumed to be the man of letters who created our culture's monuments of unaging intellectbut many aesthetic analyses and evaluations have consciously or unconsciously appealed to the "personal interests, prejudices, or emotions" of male critics and readers. As the title of this series is meant to indicate, the intellectual project called "feminist criticism" has sought to counter the limitations of ad hominem thinking about literature by asking a series of questions addressed ad feminam: to the woman as both writer and reader of texts. First, and most crucially, feminist critics ask, what is the relationship between gender and genre, between sexuality and textuality? But in mediating on these issues they raise a number of more specific questions. Does a woman of letters have a literaturea language, a history, a traditionof her own? Have conventional methods of canon-formation tended to exclude or marginalize female achievements? More generally, do men and women have different modes of literary representation, different definitions of literary production? Do such differences mean that distinctive male- (or female-) < previous page page_vii next page > < previous page page_viii next page > Page viii authored images of women (or men), as well as distinctly male and female genres, are part of our intellectual heritage? Perhaps most important, are literary differences between men and women essential or accidental, biologically determined or culturally constructed? Feminist critics have addressed themselves to these problems with increasing sophistication during the last two decades, as they sought to revise, or at times replace, ad hominem arguments with ad feminam speculations. Whether explicating individual texts, studying the oeuvre of a single author, examining the permutations of a major theme, or charting the contours of a tradition, these theorists and scholars have consistently sought to define literary manifestations of difference and to understand the dynamics that have shaped the accomplishments of literary women. As a consequence of such work, feminist critics, often employing new modes of analysis, have begun to uncover a neglected female tradition along with a heretofore hidden history of the literary dialogue between men and women. This series is dedicated to publishing books that will use innovative as well as traditional interpretive methods in order to help readers of both sexes achieve a clearer consciousness of that neglected but powerful tradition and a better understanding of that hidden history. Reason tells us, after all, that if, transcending prejudice and special pleading, we speak to, and focus on, the woman as well as the manif we think ad feminam as well as ad hominemwe will have a better chance of understanding what constitutes the human. SANDRA M. GILBERT < previous page page_viii next page > < previous page page_ix next page > Page ix Acknowledgments Ten years ago I discovered the body of Emily Dickinson's poetry to be radically different from the isolated poems of Emily Dickinson I had previously read, and energized by the burgeoning number of excellent feminist critical studies, I began to build this book. Since that time many people have aided in the growth and completion of this manuscript. I am grateful to James Woodress for his kind, sustained encouragement and to Joanne Feit Delhi for her thoughtful, pertinent suggestions. I also wish to thank Nicolas J. Perella for his interest in the project at a crucial point in the early planning stages and Susan Gubar for her clear insights and wise advice. Others have provided helpful references and suggestions: among them, Elyse Blankley, Alan E. Craven, Nancy Gutierrez, Andrea Hammer, Theresa M. Kelley, Arthur Orman, and Denise Rankin. In particular, I owe thanks to Barbara Clarke Mossberg, for offering not only warm encouragement but also incisive criticism in the last stages of revision. I am grateful, in addition, to the University of Texas at San Antonio for a Faculty Research Grant to help with manuscript preparation. And to Teresa White at Southern Illinois University Press I am especially grateful; she has been an ideal editor. Others have helped in more intangible, and yet invaluable, ways: Mark Allen, Helen Aristar-Dry, Margaret Bedrosian, Judy Fisher, Elliot Gilbert, and Martha Smith have offered the best sort of "Society" for the stoniest "Soul." Finally, the energy, expertise, wit, patience, and understanding that Sandra M. Gilbert has unstintingly provided can never be adequately acknowledged. Similarly, my debt to family members will be difficult to repay; I am keenly < previous page page_ix next page >
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