Richard E Brantley, From Loss to Gain: Aftermath in the Late-Romantic Poetry of Emily Dickinson. Symbiosis 10.1 (April 2007) 93-114.

This essay was originally published in Symbiosis: A Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations, Volume 10.

Essay Topics and Keywords:

Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Wordsworth, Late Romanticism, the poetry of Aftermath.

An extract from this essay:

In sum, Dickinson’s poetry of aftermath does more than merely illustrate the post-experiential perspective of her pre-Modern mode and the anti-experiential bias of her Postmodern intimations. In addition, if only for a glimmering moment, this strain of her art reactivates, like her Late-Romantic imagination as a whole, the natural/spiritual dialectic of Anglo-American Romanticism. Her experience of post-experience, illustrating among other things the ongoing role of friendship and of love in her ‘internalized quest romance,’ turns straw into gold, as well as loss into gain. This post-experiential perspective turns out consonant with my against-the-mainstream characterization of Dickinson’s art as ‘the poetry of experience.’ Her concept of aftermath, besides equating to ‘disastrous consequences,’ entails ‘outcome,’ auguring, thereby, ‘further harvest.’

Richard E Brantley

Richard Brantley is author of numerous studies of Romanticism, including Experience and Faith: The Late-Romantic Imagination of Emily
Dickinson (2004)