Emily Dickinson and the Romanticism Era

Emily Dickinson has been recognized as one of the greatest American poet of the 19th century. She tackled various themes in her poetical writings ranging from suffering to immortality. The typical usage of metaphor and her version of romanticism are original to her and her themes are centered on concepts that may look a priori odd to some readers. Her uncensored freedom of self expression allows her to embrace and expand on controversial topics. Her poetry depicts personas that had broken from the tradition of the main stream British romanticism as exemplified by Lord Byron or William Blake.

The proof of her liberated mind compared to her contemporaries pops up in some of her poems where the persona displays openly their libidinal tendencies. Two examples could be brought to justify this assumption: (my life had stood – a loaded gun # 764) and (wild nights – wild nights # 269).

While British romanticists contributed in the propagation of the Christian faith, Emily Dickinson engaged the personas of some of her poems in provocative and rebellious directions that openly reject the God of the Bible. The antiGod rhetoric could be detected through the speakers of (the bible is an antique volume # 1577) and of (Much madness is divinest sense# 620).

Furthermore, she dwells more than the other romanticist, on the notion of death and life after death as if her speakers wanted to teach the readers of being less aggressive and more contemplative about death. She wrote several poems that championed death and immortality. Among them, we could mention the following: (I felt a funeral, in my brain # 340); (because I could not stop for death # 479) and (I heard a fly buzz – when I die #591).

Emily Dickinson for the most part, wrote her poems in her own style although she was an author who lived during the Romanticism period.