sjw82
commented
4 years ago @rasaula This is such an interesting proposal! Just to flesh it out a little more I have a few questions.
- Do you intend to also look for references to "The Master" in the letters and poems or just Gilbert? Comparing the two might possibly show a shift over time—perhaps as she wrote more about an unnamed woman, she began to write less about The Master. I don't know a thing about it, so I can't even claim that that is a hypothesis, but it is something you might look for.
- Consider how you're going to handle the data from the poems vs. the correspondance. Obviously the markup will differ to a degree, but the significance of the data also changes because the intention behind it changes. You don't need to have an answer yet, but think about how you will account for intention.
- Do you know what source you're going to collect the letters and poems from? Are you sure that they're digitized in a machine readable way (being OCR readable rather than being photographs)? If so, you might link them in a comment to help your peers visualize your project. If not, how will you find them and, if necessary, make them usable for Oxygen?
ebeshero
djbpitt
The Quieter History of Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson is arguably one of the most reclusive literary icons in recent history (which is saying quite a lot). It's often thought she fostered a life-long longing for some unnamed man referenced in written notes, whom she called "The Master," despite no evidence of a romantic or platonic relationship with this mystery man. Beyond this speculation, most or all accounts find Dickinson was a recluse for the majority of her life, credited to the amount of her loved ones who died during a very short timeline. She remained unmarried throughout her life, and became known as a bit of a creepy spinster. Of course, there are narratives that work to define this image, and I've always found them incredibly interesting. Susan Gilbert, who eventually became Dickinson's sister-in-law after marrying her brother, was and is rumored to be Dickinson's lover. Before and after Gilbert married Dickinson's brother, there is reason to believe the two women were lovers for years. In many accounts of Dickinson's life, however, Gilbert is completely ignored as a possible love interest, and in fact has often been completely erased from Dickinson's narrative. Of course, determining what the two women truly meant to each other during their lifetime is impossible to do by any means, but by examining their direct correspondence, I hope to give the attention to their relationship, be it romantic or platonic, that has so often been ignored. This project would include analyzing letters between the two of them along with Dickinson's poems, as a good number of them seem to be directed toward a woman. I imagine the nature of what would eventually be marked up would change as the project grew, but as of now I imagine all mentions of Sue or an unnamed woman in Dickinson's poems would deserve a markup, and mention of the two's relationships in letters would be included in markups as well.