Does Emily Dickinson ever go out of style? A new biography by Martha Ackmann came out just recently. The feature film Wild Nights With Emily, a biographical comedy, is now streaming. The old cliché of the cloistered, mystical New England spinster has long been tossed aside for far more nuanced and interesting explorations of Dickinson’s life and mind. She had, for instance, a considered engagement in the philosophical issues of the day.
As literary scholar Michelle Kohler explains, “Emily Dickinson has emerged from recent studies as an astronomer, geologist, botanist, mental philosopher, and Darwinist—a learned, if amateur, scholar enlisting the scientific and philosophical discourses she encountered rather than an isolate succumbing to forces she could not control.”
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