BOOK ACTIONABLE

Turn the page...

LIFE

Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 into a middle-class, Puritan family in Massachusetts. Her father was an important polician man who influenced her thinking.

Turn the page...

WORKS

Letter-writing became the only interacion with the world. Although she wrote nearly 2,000 poems, she published only seven in her lifetime.

Turn the page...

Emily Dickinson’s poetry elaborates into timeless themes, including death, love, the passage of time, fear, sorrow, divinity, nature, and humanity’s role in the cosmos. Although she questioned traditional religion, she had a deep interest in spiritual experiences and was particularly fascinated by death.

THEMES

Turn the page...

Her poetry is characterised by economy and control. Her poems are shorts and are formed by quatrains, that are compressed. They don't have a title. The language is defined by monosillabyc common words from law, geometry and engeneering in unusual contexts. The meaning of the poem is ambiguos and highlits the emotion. Dickinson use rhetorical device. The tone is witty, ironic, cheerfull or melanchonic. She use the dash. She broke the stereotypes of poetry and use queestions, intuitions. She had a free use of rhyme.

STYLE

Turn the page...

Emily Dickinson’s poetry was shaped by her reading of the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, the Metaphysical poets, and her contemporaries like Emily Brontë and Robert Browning. The Puritan tradition and Emerson’s ideas of Transcendentalism, which had influenced New England, also played a role in her thinking. Despite these influences, she created a unique style that was separate from the popular trends and major events of her time. Unlike her contemporary Walt Whitman, who celebrated unity and wholeness, Dickinson focused on themes of brokenness and absence.

POETRY OF ISOLATION

Turn the page...

In “Hope is the thing with feathers,” Emily Dickinson uses the metaphor of a bird to represent hope. The “thing with feathers” perches in the soul, symbolizing how hope resides deep within us. This hope “sings” a constant, wordless song, offering warmth and comfort even in difficult times. The bird of hope is resilient and fearless, as it continues to sing through “the chillest land” and “strangest Sea,” showing that hope endures even in the harshest conditions. Despite its strength and persistence, hope asks nothing in return, needing only a “crumb” to survive. Dickinson’s portrayal of hope highlights its quiet, enduring presence and its essential role in human resilience, as it sustains us without demanding anything.

HOPE IS THE TINGH WITH FEATHERS

now we are going to see how careful you were !!!

DEATH She talked about the death from the view of the person dying or of a witness and somitimes she wrote about her own death. Death was the symbol of mistery and ethernity like a liberation from axiety. Death is also seen as a destination for human being, fusing with the universe to transform into music, perfume, passion, flight. LOVE Her treatment of love covers a spectrum of emotions, from joyful passion to the pain of separation, often reflecting a hope for eternal reunion. NATURE Nature, too, is central in her work, serving as a source of wonder or fear, a means for philosophical contemplation, or a metaphor for deeper themes. The poetic “I” often merges with elements of nature—becoming a bee, a spider, a bird, or a blade of grass—capturing a world where the vastness of the universe is condensed into the small and familiar.

After her death posthumous collections of her work—initially edited with changes to appeal to contemporary readers—were later published in their original form by Thomas Johnson in 1955, with her letters following in 1958.

An isolated life

After studing briefly in Mount Holyoke Female Seminary she returned home and choose a reclusive lifestyle wearing only white and rarely leaving her family’s house, except for occasional garden walks.Her main connection to the outside world was through letters to a few close friends and family members. She died in 1886.