Approaches to Teaching Dickinson's Poetry
Editor(s): Robin Riley Fast, Christine Mack Gordon
Pages: x & 203 pp.
Published: 1989
ISBN: 9780873525268 (paperback)
ISBN: 9780873525251 (cloth)
"The essays [in this volume] are...clear, direct, and issue-oriented."
The Single Hound
The life and the range of topics and tones of Emily Dickinson suit her to be included in such courses as American literature, Romanticism, realism, nineteenth-century culture, and women's literary traditions. Her poetry poses numerous challenges for readers because of its compressed style, indeterminacy, and constant surprises; her biography fascinates students and critics alike.
This volume emphasizes instruction of Dickinson's poetry at the undergraduate level. Like other volumes in the MLA's Approaches to Teaching World Literature series, it is divided into two parts. The first, "Materials," discusses editions of Dickinson's poetry, aids to teaching, reference works, biographies, critical studies, and background materials. In the second part, "Approaches," twenty essays suggest ways to introduce Dickinson and her poetry, draw attention to different aspects of her art, and place the poems in larger contexts. Among the topics raised are love, epistemology, the treatment of death, and implications of gender. Among the courses described are a composition class and an advanced literature class. An appendix provides sample assignments.
Table of Contents
Approaches to Teaching Dickinson's Poetry
PART 1: MATERIALS
Robin Riley Fast and Christine Mack Gordon
Introduction
Courses and Texts
Dickinson in the Classroom
Aids to Teaching
- The Instructor's Library
- Reference Works
- Background Materials
- Biography
- Criticism
PART 2: APPROACHES
Introduction
Introducing Emily Dickinson
Teaching Dickinson: Testimony of a Veteran
Richard B. Sewall
Dickinson's Letters to Higginson
John Mann
How Language Works: Learning with Dickinson
Mary L. Morton
Introducing Dickinson in a Basic Literature Course
Katharine M. Rogers
Teaching Dickinson to the Fine Arts Major
Alice Hall Petry
Group Work as an Approach to Teaching Dickinson
Rowena Revis Jones
Reading Emily Dickinson
Near Rhymes and Reason: Style and Personality in Dickinson's Poetry
James Guthrie
Dickinson's Language: Interpreting Truth Told Slant
Cristanne Miller
Reading Doubly: Dickinson, Gender, and Multiple Meaning
Suzanne Juhasz
"My Class had stood--a Loaded Gun"
William Shullenberger
Dickinson's Poems in Their Own Contexts
Voice, Tone, and Persona in Dickinson's Love Poetry
Nancy Walker
A Posthumanist Approach to Teaching Dickinson
William Galperin
Dickinson as Comic Poet
Dorothy Huff Oberhaus
Certain Slants of Light: Exploring the Art of Dickinson's Fascicle 13
Douglas Novich Leonard
Literary, Cultural, and Biographical Contexts
The Role of Dickinson's Biography in the Classroom
Frank D. Rashid
A Feminist Critic Responds to Recurring Student Questions about Dickinson
Cheryl Walker
"By Birth a Bachelor": Dickinson and the Idea of Womanhood in the American Nineteenth Century
Charlotte Nekola
"Looking at Death, is Dying": Understanding Dickinson's Morbidity
Barton Levi St. Armand
Dickinson among the Realists
Elissa Greenwald
Dickinson Identified: Newer Criticism and Feminist Classrooms
Mary Loeffelholz
Appendix
Sample Assignments
Works Cited
Index of First Lines
Index of Names
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