Extending the critical discussion which has focused on the hymns of Isaac Watts as an influence on Emily Dickinson's poetry, this study brings to bear the hymnody of Dickinson's female forbears and contemporaries and considers Isaac Watts's position as a Dissenter for a fuller understanding of Dickinson's engagement with hymn culture. Victoria N. Morgan argues that the emphasis on autonomy in Watts, a quality connected to his position as a Dissenter, and the work of women hymnists, who sought to redefine God in ways more compatible with their own experience, posing a challenge to the hierarchical 'I-Thou' form of address found in traditional hymns, inspired Dickinson's adoption of hymnic forms. As she traces the powerful intersection of tradition and experience in Dickinson's poetry, Morgan shows Dickinson using the modes and motifs of hymn culture to manipulate the space between concept and experience-a space in which Dickinson challenges old ways of thinking and expresses her own innovative ideas on spirituality. Focusing on Dickinson's use of bee imagery and on her notions of religious design, Morgan situates the radical re-visioning of the divine found in Dickinson's 'alternative hymns' in the context of the poet's engagement with a community of hymn writers. In her use of the fluid imagery of flight and community as metaphors for the divine, Dickinson anticipates the ideas of feminist theologians who privilege community over hierarchy.

Music is a vital element in the poems and prose of Emily Dickinson but, despite its importance, the function of music as a literary technique in her work has not yet been fully explored; what information exists is scarce and scattered. The significance of the musical terminology and imagery in Dickinson's poetry and prose are thoroughly explored in this book. It considers the music of Dickinson's life and times and how it influenced her writing, how she combined music and poetry to create her own style, several important nineteenth century reviews for what they reveal about the musical quality of her work, and her use of Protestant hymns as a model for her poetry. It also provides insights into musical interpretations of her poetry as related to the author by some fifty modern-day composers and arrangers, and discusses musical reflections of her poems and letters.

A Concordance to the Poems of Emily Dickinson is the third volume in the distinguished series "Cornell Concordances." Like the others, it was programmed on an IBM 704 electronic computer and provides an alphabetical list of all significant words—each word given in context. In order to provide variants, it was based on Thomas H. Johnson's three-volume edition of all the known texts of Emily Dickinson's poems. Included are an analytical preface by the editor and an index of words in the order of frequency.

Widely considered the definitive edition of Emily Dickinson’s poems, this landmark collection presents her poems here for the first time “as she preserved them,” and in the order in which she wished them to appear. It is the only edition of Dickinson’s complete poems to distinguish clearly those she took pains to copy carefully onto folded sheets in fair hand—presumably to preserve them for posterity—from the ones she kept in rougher form. It is also unique among complete editions in presenting the alternate words and phrases Dickinson chose to use on the copies of the poems she kept, so that we can peer over her shoulder and see her composing and reworking her own poems. The world’s foremost scholar of Emily Dickinson, Cristanne Miller, guides us through these stunning poems with her deft and unobtrusive notes, helping us understand the poet’s quotations and allusions, and explaining how she composed, copied, and circulated her poems. Miller’s brilliant reordering of the poems transforms our experience of them. A true delight, this award-winning collection brings us closer than we have ever been to the writing practice of one of America’s greatest poets. With its clear, uncluttered page and beautiful production values, it is a gift for students of Emily Dickinson and for anyone who loves her poems.

R. W. Franklin, the foremost scholar of Dickinson’s manuscripts, has prepared an authoritative one-volume edition of all extant poems by Emily Dickinson—1,789 poems in all, the largest number ever assembled—rendered with Dickinson's spelling, punctuation, and capitalization intact.

An interdisciplinary examination of the poet, her milieu, and the ways she and her contemporaries freed their work from cultural limitations.