Dickinson

A)

American Romanticism, also called the American Renaissance, marked the first maturation of
American letters. It was a time of “excitement over human possibilities, and a high regard for
individual ego.” (Woodlief) The American people believed in the natural goodness of man,
and that in a natural environment, man would behave well; however, man is hindered by his
surrounding civilization. Faith in emotion, spontaneity, and sincerity were all markers of
truth during this time. During the Romantic movement, the way one expressed himself was
valued more highly than the way one presented himself or the way he was seen by others.
Throughout Romanticism, nature was thought to be a source of instruction, delight, and a way
to quench man’s thirst for knowledge and understanding. Writers connected back to their
literal “roots”, finding inspiration and wisdom in nature. They often wrote about the contrast
between the pleasant simplicity of nature and the unnatural constraints of society.

This period, from 1828 to 1865, was when America began to regard itself as independent,
after setting itself apart from Britain. New writers and artists influenced the individuality and
uniqueness of America through their work. This new, creative fire ignited a separate, growing
culture that, over time, gave birth to the America known today.

The Romanticism movement flourished, being fed by poetic accounts of nature; literature
bathed in imagery, irony, and originality; and works involving subjects from freedom and
equality to guilt and salvation. The American brand of romanticism developed its own
character, especially as these writers tried self-consciously to be new and original. The
development of this movement was aided by the amount of cultural free time given for
literature and art; practical matters such as “the essential of making a living and establishing
political independence had been squared. The “glory years” were from 1850-1855, a
surprisingly short period of time. This short-lived literary outburst may have been related to
the conflicts that would soon lead to war.

B)
As a poet of the Romantic movement and Transcendentalist offshoot during the 19th century,
Emily Dickinson distinguished the mindset of the common person of the 19th and 20th
century as well as influencing the modern era as an influential American Romantic poet by
incorporating God, death, and the mysterious use of nature into her poetry.

Dickinson displays Romantic tendencies: personification, descriptions to a point of madness,

and a reference to her faith and inner-being. Dickinson also described the concept of death,
and puts an emphasis the importance of the spirit and intuition in her poem, “I Could Not Stop
for Death”.

Moreover, Emily Dickinson was an introvert, and it can be concluded from this and the fact
that she was born into a family of “pure Christian thinking” that she handled her problems by
questioning death through the use of poetry.

With her Romantic characteristics, she also evoked a Transcendentalist intuition, as proven
by the collaboration of many scholars in their social writings describing Dickinson to
transform the matrices of body and mind into a unified sense of self and power.

Therefore, primarily by combining characteristics from these two literary mindsets, Emily
Dickinson brings foundation to the threshold of the Romanticism movement and the
Transcendentalist offshoot by means of her poetry and lifestyle.

Romanticism, quite literally, was a movement in literature and the fine arts that began in the
early 19th Century that stressed personal emotion, free play of the imagination, personal
freedom from the rules of form, oftentimes stressing images of death, imagined past, the
mystery of nature, beauty, strangeness, and faith.

In relation to her poetry by means of Romanticism, Dickinson recognized death, and had
somewhat a fear of death. Not so much death itself, but the ambivalence and unknowing of
death. This ambivalence sparked her work exponentially. It is from these letters that one can
also assume that Dickinson’s poetry reflected how she lived each day, inwardly, and
outwardly. his stanza can then be analyzed further in that this was a moment displaying
Dickinson’s imagined past and her mysterious belief in nature. Though it will never be known
what Dickinson was truly thinking of when she was writing this poem, as there are no letters
or evidence which to validate her train of thought, it can in fact be deducted that her poems
reflect how she lived her life in a general sense.
Nature and its mysterious glory are eminent all throughout Dickinson’s poetry which
distinguish her Romantic characteristics in a different sense. Emily Dickinson’s use of images
in the Bible, nature’s effect on humans, and how she fabricated her poetry so particularly,
synthesized a lifestyle uniquely hers by calling earth her paradise and that nature and
friendship were primary.

Specifically, Transcendentalism is the simplification of lifestyle, the lack of necessity for

material goods, the belief in the unimportance of objects, and the pursuit of a keen focus on
one’s inner self which incorporates one’s intuition and spirit rather than relying on one’s
physical being as a means of surviving. It is important to understand that Transcendentalism
was not necessarily a movement in response to Romanticism, but instead an offshoot of
Romanticism.

Romantic characteristics and Transcendentalist ideals go hand and hand in this poem. Death,
nature, and imagined past all compound with intuition and reliance on her inner being. By
means of displaying Transcendentalist characteristics through Dickinson’s life, it can be
safely concluded that “Emily Dickinson was in fact the only person in America who really
made Transcendentalism practical.”

She reflected not only on moments of greatest pleasure, but also times of unrelenting pain and
ambiguity toward her own spiritual identity. The synthesis of her introvert mindset can be
attributed to her Christian upbringing, and her constant struggle with the thought of death.
Perhaps Dickinson evoked parts of Puritanism , and meshed ideas of Romanticism with it,
thus creating her own self-avowed Transcendentalist lifestyle. Instead of participating in a
community based on religion that helps the surrounding community, Dickinson built her own
“community” inside of herself by use of intuition and exercising her religious spirit.

Dickinson demonstrates uses of Romanticism all throughout her poetry and lifestyle,
primarily in “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” because it incorporates death, faith,
mysterious nature, and imagined past. As an offshoot from Romanticism, Transcendentalism
took hold on a select few, especially Emily Dickinson who was deeply influenced by
Transcendentalism, but still kept strong ties to Romanticism.

In conclusion, it is from the observations gathered by scholars and Dickinson’s poetry that
one can conclude that Emily Dickinson was in fact the barer of the threshold between the
Romantic Era and Transcendentalist offshoot.