Emily Dickinson's Rich Conversation Poetry, Philosophy, Science

Emily Dickinson's Rich Conversation: Poetry, Philosophy, Science is a comprehensive account of Emily Dickinson's aesthetic and intellectual life. Through her letters and poems, Richard E. Brantley identifies Dickinson's dialogue with John Locke's rational empiricism, Charles Darwin's evolutionary biology, Wordsworth's 'natural methodism,' Ralph Waldo Emerson's idealism, and European and American intellectual traditions. Contrary to the image of the isolated poet, this ambitious study reveals Dickinson's agile mind developing through conversation with a community of contemporaries.

Richard E. Brantley is Alumni Professor of English, Emeritus, at the University of Florida, USA. His publications explore how the empirical and evangelical language of experience complicates the tough and tender tone of Anglo-American Romanticism. These works include: Wordsworth's "Natural Methodism," Experience and Faith: The Late-Romantic Imagination of Emily Dickinson, and Locke, Wesley, and the Method of English Romanticism, which won the Conference on Christianity and Literature Award.

Introduction
PART I: GATHERING EXPERIENCE
1. Proclaiming Empiricism
2. Guiding Experiment
PART II: EXTENDING EXPERIENCE
3. Gaining Loss
4. Despairing Hope
Conclusion
Appendix A: Empiricism and Evangelicalism: A Combination of Romanticism
Appendix B: Locke and Wesley: An Essence of Influence
Appendix C: Wadsworth and Dickinson: A Marriage of Minds