Emily Dickinson Flashcards
Passage Analysis: Unseen poem
Fly: How
- ‘buzz’ stressed trochaically + assoc w death,decay/x etheral = abrupt opening line
- ‘Between the heaves of storm’ moment of quietude inbtw storm of life and death + stillness of mourners
- Synecdoche ‘eyes’ genuine greif and spectatorship -> mouner’s gathered to ‘witness’ ‘king’/ascension
- ‘last Onset’ = last begining
- ‘interposed’ cacophonous verb = abrupt intrusion - dissipates expectaion
- ‘blue-uncertain-stumbling-buzz’ synasthesia as senses fail/eratic movement
- ‘I could not see to see’ diacope -> despite strict adherance 2 PCoGD x assurance of resurection
Passage Analysis: Unseen Poem
Fly: What
- In this passage, a speaker, seemingly from the afterlife, retells their own death and the proceeding death vigil with Dickinson engaging in the traditions of Ars Moriendi to emphasise death’s inscrutability.
- The corporeal fly’s intrusion into the speaker’s death also indicates Dickinson’s possibly view in the macabre and inconsequential conventions of death bed vigils, elucidating that no matter how fastidiously observed, a ‘good death’ cannot be guaranteed.
Passage Analysis: Unseen Poem
Slant: What
In passage , Dickinson discusses the pain that is central to humanity through conceit of despair as a “Slant of Light” that is sent by divinity.
Passage Analysis: Unseen Poem
Slant: How
Connotations of ‘slant’ paradoxical - confusing not illuminating + ‘winter afternoons’ suggest light
+ nature = synonymous w death -> destabilising romantic view of nature
* Ponderous connotations of ‘oppresses’ + ‘heft’ / alliterative oxymoron ‘Heavenly Hurt’ = religion which is
supposed to provide comfort only accentuates sp’s sense of dislocation
* Uncharacteristic use of full rhyme belies bleakness of speaker’s disconsolating tone
* Sharp assonance ‘internal difference’ + ungrammatical comma ‘where the meanings, are’ show sp’s internal
suffering
* ‘no scar’ + ‘seal of despair’ evoke sp’s sense of entrapment
* Imperial diction suggests nature = conduit of callous God
* Personification of landscape + simile return to idea of death within nature evoking sp’s despair over own
mortality
Passage Analysis: Unseen Poem
Because: what
In passage _, Puritan beliefs in a peaceful transition between life and death are endorsed, however the poem belies something darker.
Passage Analysis: Unseen Poem
Becuase: How
ED harnesses sentimental motif of death as personified chivalric ‘kindly’ suitor through conceit of sp as a bride + death as bridegroom
Opening stanza’s strong iambic metre + exact rhyme of ‘me’ + immortality’ predictability to carriage’s movement + sp’s ease
despite imminence of death
internal long vowel sounds of ‘slowly,’ ‘drove’ and ‘no’ endow death with a soporific appeal, suggesting easeful transition btw this
life + beyond
S3 = metaphor for sp’s life: ‘school’, ‘field of grain’ + ‘setting sun’
rhotic allit of ‘recess’ + ‘ring’ + effortful verb ‘strove’ produce sense of life’s effortfulness, even for children, + counterpoint
to sp’s leisurely journey
Metrical break of S4 as ED now moves to destabilize transcendentalist view of death as easeful
* Sp’s loss of agency as they move from subject to object position ‘or rather - he passed us -’
* Sp now ill-prepared for death with their ‘gossamer gown’ doing little to protect them from death’s ‘quivering chill’ – icy
assonance
* Rather than church sp arrives at grave – ‘swelling in the ground’ abject connotations of ‘swelling’
* Optional analysis of S6
Passage Analysis: Unseen Poem
Blank: What
In passage , the conceit of despair as wandering through a labrinth of “Blanks” also alludes to the power of intuition and imagination to overcome emotional suffering
Passage Analysis: Unseen Poem
Blank: How
- repetition + capitalisation of “Blank” accentuates sp’s sense of endless, inescapable emptiness / by severing tetrameter line after
‘blank’ ED harnesses implied space at end of line to further emphasise the theme of absence - ‘threadless way’ introduces conceit of despair as being lost in maze → allusion to Theseus subverted to show despair as
meaningless, directionless etc. - metaphor: effortful + depersonalizing connotations of ‘pushed’ + mundanity of ‘mechanic’ as if sp simply going through motions
- Fatalism of ‘To stop — or perish — or advance — ‘emphasized by dashes
- All rhymes slanted skewing acoustic expectation + creating a constant state of deferral, of ends nearly arrived at but never realized
- Sonic parallelism of severed tetrameter lines continues conceit → sp think maze ended but lack of dash = no end
- harsh consonance of ‘d’ (‘end’, ‘gained’, ‘beyond;, ‘disclosed’ etc) gives sense of enclosure/entrapment
- Paradox of ‘twas lighter – to be blind’ = 2 readings: easier to give up/turn away from emotions OR romantic idea intuition will
provide enlightenment
Passage Analysis: Unseen Poem
Frost: what
In passage, the speaker resisits death but rails against its inevitability.
Passage Analysis: Unseen Poem
Frost: How
- Conceit: frost = death + flower = mortal life
- Imperative ‘secure your flower’ = imperious tone
- Simile ‘like sailors fighting with a leak’ foreshadows futility of speaker’s efforts to evade death
- Anaphora + dashes ‘to Sea – to mountain – to the Sun’ show each of speaker’s failed attempts to save
flower of life + destabalising romantic belief in nature’s regenerative power - S3 – lack of Dickinsonian dashes + severed tetrameter line + verbs ‘wedged’ + ‘pried’ show speaker’s
Sisyphean effort to save flower / simile to contrasts the ease with which the malevolent ‘narrow snake’
of death in nature is able to overcome speaker’s efforts - Plosive allit ‘beauty bent’ as flower finally succumbs
- Parallelism ‘we hated Death and hated Life’ = speaker’s realization that life + death are inextricably
linked but not harmoniously, as in transcendentalist tradition but cruelly by a callous God
Passage Analysis: Unseen Poem
Funeral: what
Through the conceit of psycholofical anguish as a funeral in the speaker’s brains, Dickinson protrays one of her most poignant and demoralising poems on despair.
Passage Analysis: Unseen Poem
Funeral:How
- Regular iambic pulse of common metre + uncharacteristic full rhyme intensifies psychological unravelling of sp
- Tactile verb ‘felt’ + visceral noun ‘brain’ convey sp’s mental anguish manifests physically
- Sp’s debilitating thoughts charatcerised as ‘Mourners’ in conceit + captialised to give sense of maddening power over sp
- Epizeuxis of ‘treading - treading’ as thoughts wear down sp
- simile ‘like a drum’ a sp X make out words only sounds = alienation + loss of psych cohesion
- ‘boots of lead’ = ponderous diction again highlights profundity of sp’s anguish
- synecdoche ‘ear’ as sp’s dislocation reduces them to single bio entity
- 2 readings of S5: L17: Escalated polysyndeton = intensification of sp’s suffering OR revelation / ‘plank in reason broke’ =
metaphor for speaker’s complete loss of sanity OR for moment of revelation / plosive ‘d’ “ diacope of ‘down’, ‘down’ =
dramatic breakdown OR epiphany / ‘finished knowing’ = finished sanity/reason OR state of anguish end with moment of
revelation / break from full rhyme = sp completely disconnected from world OR broken free from despair
Passage Analysis: Unseen Poem
Hope: What
In passage , Dickinson explores the indefatigable nature of hope resisting against despair in her poem of definition.
Passage Analysis: Unseen Poem
Loaded Gun: What
In passage , the speaker gains controversial comfort in an unequal and exploitative relationship, reflecting Dickinson’s condemnation of patriarchal power.
Passage Analysis: Unseen Poem
Op House: What
Reylaying a neighbourhood death, the speaker fuses the domestic and gothic in passage .
