Comic power in Emily Dickinson

About this book

In this boldly revisionary work, three noted Dickinson scholars take issue with the traditional tragic image of the poet. Focusing on the comic elements in Dickinson's art from a feminist point of view, they show how Dickinson uses the comedic resources of language to contest all types of orthodoxy and to offer the possibility of transforming society. Following a jointly written chapter on "Comedy and Performance in Emily Dickinson's Poetry," each author takes up a different aspect of comedy in Dickinson's work. Suzanne Juhasz looks at teasing as a form of humor and criticism. Martha Nell Smith examines the cartoons (reproduced in this book) with which Dickinson illustrated some of her poems and letters and explores the way in which other poems present imagery in cartoon-like sequences. And Cristanne Miller delves into the humor of excess or grotesquerie which Dickinson uses to unhinge the reader's normalizing frames of reference and make space for a different perspective. These views introduce a new Emily Dickinson - playful, wry, witty, tough, bold, challenging, and successful. Comic Power in Emily Dickinson recovers a poet who questioned not only authority but also the structure of her society. It makes an important contribution to studies of women's humor and the relationship, between gender and authority.