From Publishers Weekly
In this readable new biography of the reclusive poet, Wheaton English professor Lundin concentrates on Dickinson's ambivalence toward Christianity and its effects on the self. He traces her inner debate through a careful analysis of Dickinson's poems and letters, and he concludes that she was "one of the major religious thinkers of her age." According to Lundin, Dickinson's struggle with suffering and the character of God mirrored the major forcesADarwinism, the Civil War, the spread of industrialismAthat tested and altered American Protestantism. Lundin also contends that Dickinson's notion of God as silent and severe was drawn from her relationship with her father, Edward Dickinson, a remote patriarch who disdained the enthusiasm and emotion of religious revivals. The "Pugilist and Poet," as Dickinson described herself, longed to believe in God's loving care, but her sense of human frailty would not allow her wholly to accept His existence. In addition, she could not profess firsthand knowledge of the fruits of grace; nor could she detect any signs in her own soul of the holy joy that others claimed as they accepted Christ. Her choice of "poetry as a surrogate for traditional religious belief," writes Lundin, set her on a path to solitude, a path that led away from marriage, church and the world outside Amherst, Mass. Lundin's close readings of Dickinson's poetry and his careful analysis of Dickinson's historical and social context make a persuasive case for the implicit religious dimension of Dickinson's life and work.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Synopsis
Named an "Outstanding Academic Book" by Choice when it was published in 1998, Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief has since been widely recognized as one of the finest biographies of the great American poet. This superb work by Roger Lundin is now available in a revised edition that, in addition to incorporating text updates, aligns all citations of Dickinson's poems with the newly established standard edition of Dickinson's writing. Lundin looks chronologically at Dickinson's life, paying special attention to her experience of faith. He skillfully relates her personal development -- as it can be charted through her poems and letters -- to nineteenth-century American political, social, religious, and intellectual history. Series: Library of Religious Biography Series Editors: Mark A. Noll (series editor), Nathan O. Hatch (series editor), Allen C. Guelzo (series editor) The Library of Religious Biography is a series of original biographies on important religious figures throughout American and British history. The authors are well-known historians, each a recognized authority in the period of religious history in which his or her subject lived and worked.
Grounded in solid research of both published and archival sources, these volumes link the lives of their subjects -- not always thought of as "religious" persons -- to the broader cultural contexts and religious issues that surrounded them. Each volume includes a bibliographical essay and an index to serve the needs of students, teachers, and researchers. Marked by careful scholarship yet free of footnotes and academic jargon, the books in this series are well-written narratives meant to be read and enjoyed as well as studied. Titles in this Series: Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody's Sister Blaise Pascal: Reasons of the Heart Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelicalism The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief Occupy until I Come: A. T. Pierson and the Evangelization of the World The Puritan as Yankee: A Life of Horace Bushnell Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson Thomas Merton and the Monastic Vision William Ewart Gladstone: Faith and Politics in Victorian Britain
