“‘Faith’ is a fine invention”: Dickinson’s Performance of Doubt and Belief

This book covers nineteenth-century American poet Emily Dickinson who captured the multifaceted nature of life in all of its uncertainties. Studies on her exploration of faith are ample, but in this book, the author uncovers Dickinson’s playful role-play in enacting solemn themes of religion, death, and the unknown. Dickinson’s creativity encompasses not only her use of language but also her poetic personae and self-created poetic stages inviting readers to question, contemplate deeply or even poke fun at life's absurdities. By using performative roles such as the rejected outcast, passive supplicant, and playful warrior, Dickinson unveils--through a paradoxical framework of belief and unbelief-- a line of inquiry that is multifocal and erratic to “tell all the truth and tell it slant.” Read more