Document Type

Article

Language

eng

Format of Original

29 p.

Publication Date

2014

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press

Source Publication

Emily Dickinson Journal

Source ISSN

1059-6879

Original Item ID

doi: 10.1353/edj.2014.0007

Abstract

This essay focuses on Dickinson’s poem “The Soul has Bandaged moments - ” (Fr360), placing it in relation to several interrelated hymns (Independent, Unitarian, and gospel) that share a common pattern of imagery deriving from the popular “Crowning Day” motif. Through a linked sequence of paired readings, it shows how connections between two loosely related texts sharpen and become meaningful when the two texts are brought into dialog with a third text. Juxtaposing three overlapping pairs of lyrics—first by Daniel Webster Whittle and William Channing Gannett, then by Philip Doddridge and Emily Dickinson, and, finally, by Gannett and Dickinson (with a brief coda on Frances Harper)—this essay illustrates how texts that probably did not bear on one another directly may have related to one another indirectly as they worked within and responded to a shared, dynamic network (or meme-plex) of hymns that underwent constant adaptation and recombination throughout the nineteenth century.

Comments

Published version. Emily Dickinson Journal, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2014): 46-74. DOI. © 2014 Johns Hopkins University Press. Used with permission.

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