Emily Dickinson Flashcards
What is Transcendentalism?
The transformation of traditional religion by rejecting the strict Puritan religious attitudes that were the heritages of New England.
(Transcendentalism allowed Dickinson to emerge from her Puritan heritage and discover her self-worth by realizing that what she felt in her heart was substantial of recognition.)
What are some key contextual points about Emily Dickinson?
- she never married although recieved a marriage proposal
- dickinson had exceptional schooling for a girl of the 19th century
- she experienced many deaths of relatives and friends and lived near a graveyard
- she lived in a puritan society but what also later influenced in transcendentalism
- the civil war touched her life
- a social and religous movement called ‘The Great Revival’ renewed people’s faith but dickinson looked upon it with scepticism
- the Dickinsons were considered “a representative family of the age”
Key Quotes from ‘It was not Death, for I stood up’
- ‘fire’ and ‘frost’
- ‘as if my life were shaven / and fitted to a frame’
- ‘everything that ticked - had stopped - and space stares all around’
- ‘it was not’
Key Quotes from After great pain a formal feeling comes
- ‘nerves sat ceremonius like Tombs’
- ‘Quartz contentment’
- ‘The Feet, mechanical, go round’
- ‘Snow’ and ‘Freezing persons’
- ‘This is the hour of lead’
Key Quotes from ‘The last Night that She lived’
- ‘made nature different’
- ‘we noticed smallest things’ ‘things overlooked before’
- ‘a Jealousy for her arose’
- ‘lightly as a Reed, bent to the water, struggled scarce’
Key Quotes from ‘Because I could not stop for Death’
- ‘carriages’ ‘gown’
- ‘we passed’ ‘Children’ ‘Gazing Grain’ ‘Setting Sun’
- ‘a House that seemed a swelling of the ground’
Key Quotes from ‘I felt a Funeral, in my Brain’
- Service like a Drum
- ‘beating, beating’ ‘treading, treading’
- ‘Plank in Reason broke’ ‘Creak across my soul’
- ‘Boots of Lead’
- ‘Wrecked, solitary, here’
Key Quotes from ‘Behind Me - dips Eternity’
- ‘Myself, the Term between’
- ‘Tis’ kingdoms afterward they say’
- ‘Maelstrom’
- ‘Midnight to the North of her’ ‘Midnight to the South of her’
- ‘Miracle’ and ‘Sea’
Key Quotes from ‘My Life had stood a Loaded Gun’
- ‘Loaded Gun’
- ‘valley glow’ ‘cordial light’
- ‘I guard My Master’s Head’
- ‘He longer must - than I’
Key Quotes from ‘The World is not Conclusion’
- ‘invisible as music’
- ‘beckons and it baffles’
- ‘sagacity must go’
- ‘narcotics cannot still the Tooth that nibbles at the soul’
Key Quotes from ‘I heard a Fly buzz when I died’
- ‘King / Be witnessed in the room’
- ‘uncertain stumbling buzz / Between the lights - and me’
- ‘the Window failed and I could not see to see’
Key Quotes from ‘Theres a certain Slant of light’
- ‘oppresses like the heft of Cathedral Tunes’
- ‘internal difference / where the meanings are’
- ‘Heavenly Hurt’ ‘we can find no scar’
Key Quotes from ‘A narrow fellow in the Grass’
- ‘you may have met him did you not’
- ‘when stooping to secure it / it wrinkled and was gone’
- ‘Natures People’ ‘I know and they know me’
Key Quotes from ‘What mystery pervades a well!’
- ‘can stand so tall and look so bold at what is awe to me’
- ‘the ones that site her most / have never passed her haunted house’
- ‘those who know her know her less the nearer her they get’
Key Quotes from ‘A bird came down the Walk’
- ‘ate the fellow, raw’ and ‘let a Beetle pass’
- ‘rapid eyes’ ‘hurried’ ‘frightened’
- ‘Oars divide the Ocean’ and ‘splashless as they swim’
