[Wendy Barker]Lunacy of Light : Emily Dickinson and the Experience of Metaphor (Ad Feminam)(pdf){Zzzzz}[BЯ]

"Are you afraid of the sun?" Emily Dickinson asked a friend in 1859.

Wendy Barker states here that that apparently casual query reveals a major theme of Dickinson’s poetry, a theme she shares with women writers ranging from Anne Finch to Anne Sexton. It is a tradition based upon the inversion of the traditional male-centered metaphors of light and dark. Through time the light-giving sun has represented vitality, order, God; the light-swallowing night death, chaos, Satan. These metaphors are reinforced in the writing of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Keats,but Eliot, Brontë, Browning, and Dickinson use the sun and images of light quite differently.

Barker argues that since light was a masculine tradition, it had come to represent male power, energy, sexuality—not only to Dickinson but to other women writing during the era. To these writers the inversion of the light/darkness metaphor became a countertradition used as a means to express their energies in a society that was hostile to their intelligence. Dickinson, who read avidly, could not have been insensitive to this usage of light as a masculine symbol—of her Calvinist God, of her father, of all that was male—and of darkness as a feminine symbol.

Emily Dickinson thought in a richly symbolic manner. Her most frequently used metaphor is one of light in contrast to darkness, employing single-word references to light more than one thousand times in her 1,775 poems. Barker offers close readings and new interpretations of some previously overlooked or misunderstood poems and demonstrates that "Many of her most ecstatic images are of little lights created from darkness." In answer to those critics who have characterized her poems as being piecemeal, Barker argues that Dickinson’s consistent use of light as a metaphor unifies her poetry.

In her final chapter, Barker explores the ways in which twentieth-century female writers have carried on the countertradition of the light/darkness metaphor. "That Dickinson was able so brilliantly to transform and transcend the normative metaphoric patterning of her culture, creating, in effect, a metaphor of her own, has much to do with the genius of her art."

Editorial Reviews
Review
"Barker’s graceful and often dramatic prose vividly depicts Dickinson’s poetic vision. . . . Astute and sensitive interpretations."—Wendy Martin, Signs


"Deft and persuasive. . . . Lunacy of Light is an admirable addition to recent studies of Dickinson by feminist critics. It is feminist criticism of the non-castrating kind. It doesn’t warp the poems to fit a dogma or an ideology. At the same time, one finishes the book agreeing with Barker that Dickinson’s handling of light and dark metaphors shows how acutely conscious she was of her alienation from the ‘values and practices’ of her culture."—William G. Heath, New England Quarterly


"Barker authoritatively surveys . . . the use of light and dark imagery in the literature of Western culture, showing that traditionally light has been associated with male power, energy, reason, and God, and dark has traditionally been associated with woman, death, chaos, and Satan. . . . Soundly argued and well documented."—P. J. Ferlazzo, Choice

‘"Wonderfully lucid, and as richly fluent in the realm of functional symbolism as is Dickinson herself, Lunacy of Light should become a source of major enlightenment for future scholars intent on seeking out the intellectual delights amid the sensual riches of this most misunderstood poet."—Bryce Milligan, San Antonio Light

"Knowledgeable, informative, and as witty as she is thorough. . . . By focusing on how she manipulates common metaphors, Barker shows how Dickinson’s poems work as a critique of culture and an assertion of women’s different sort of strength."—Martha Nell Smith, Women’s Review of Books





About the Author
Wendy Barker, associate professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio and winner of the Ithaca House Poetry Series Competition for 1990, recently published two collections of poems: Let the Ice Speak and Winter Chickens.

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press; 1st edition (January 1, 1991)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0809317079
ISBN-13: 978-0809317073