Emily Dickinson

Beauty is not

caused. It is.

-- Emily Dickinson

Literary/Historical Context

Unfortunately, few people knew of the beauty that was Emily Dickinson’s poetic genius until after her death. When the man she loved moved to California, Dickinson, then 32, began dressing exclusively in white and refused to venture beyond her house and garden. By the time she died in 1886, she had written at least 1,775 poems, of which only seven had been published. Her first volume of poetry was published four years later, but the extent of Dickinson’s talent wasn’t recognized until 1955 when a complete, unedited version was published.

Theme

Beauty

Other viewpoints on beauty….

In the factory we make cosmetics; in the drugstore we sell hope.--- Charles Revlon

If Jack’s in love, he’s no judge of Jill’s beauty.--- Benjamin Franklin

Beauty is a fading flower.--- The Book of Isaiah 28:1

I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin- deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want– an adorable pancreas?

--- Jean KerrThe Snake Has All the Lines

Writing/Discussion Prompts

1.What does this quote mean to you?

2.Discuss one or two ways society might be different if everyone subscribed to this philosophy?

3.Think of a famous person today who might like to comment on Dickinson’s quote. Who is the person and what might that comment be?

4.Write a paragraph explaining how you feel about beauty. Then try to summarize your main idea in one or two sentences.

5.What kinds of companies might use this quote to promote a product? What companies probably would not? Explain your responses.

Just a few notes before you start reading…..

Dickinson is known for her use of special kinds of rhyme.

1.Slant Rhyme- a kind of consonance (relation between words in which the final consonants in the stressed syllables agree, but the vowels that precede them differ):– Add/Read, up/step, peer/pare, while/hill

2. Eye Rhyme- rhyme that appears correct from the spelling, but is not so from the pronunciation:– Watch/match, love/move,

through/enough

3. True Rhyme- sounds that rhyme, usually occupying corresponding positions in two or more lines of verse. The correspondence of sound is based on the vowels succeeding consonants of the accented syllables, which must, for a true rhyme, be preceded by different consonants. – “fan” and “ran” constitute a true rhyme

because the vowel and succeeding consonant sounds (“an”) are the same but the preceding sounds are different.