Emily Dickinson and Pain

Literature research papers on Emily Dickinson often focus on her study of pain in her poetry. Paper Masters custom writes research papers on Emily Dickinson or any other great poet you need explicated.

Pain is a recurrent theme in the poetry of Emily Dickinson and her approach to pain is highly individualistic. An Emily Dickinson and pain research paper states, " Her best poetry is not concerned with the causes but with the qualities of pain." I propose to take two of Dickinson's poems:

• "There's a Certain Slant of Light,"
• "There is a Pain-So Utter"

For a good research paper on Dickinson, be sure to include the following elements in the paper:

1. Discuss the relationship that is posited therein between pain and spirituality.
2. The thesis of this paper should be that such a relationship can be shown to exist and that it is central to the interpretation of the two poems.
3. Attempt to show that her sense of pain is, in essence, religious in nature.

The following scholarly resources that can be used in your Emily Dickinson and pain term paper:

• Cynthia Wolff's biography Emily Dickinson;
• An anthology of critical essays on Dickinson edited by Harold Bloom, Modern Critical Views; Emily Dickinson;
• Karl Keller's The Only Kangaroo Among the Beauty;
• Emily Dickinson and America which has some chapters on Dickinson's relationship with Puritanism;
• A selection of Dickinson's letters edited by Thomas Johnson and entitled, Emily Dickinson; Selected Letters;
• An anthology of critical essays on Dickinson edited by Tamara Johnson and entitled, Readings on Emily Dickinson;
• An anthology of critical essays on Dickinson edited by Gudrun Grabher et al and entitled The Emily Dickinson Handbook.

The approach used in the Emily Dickinson and pain term paper will consist of an attempt to relate the poems to Dickinson's life. There is, in this, a fundamental zone of danger which this writer believes some critics have strayed into. There is a fundamentally subjective quality to some of Dickinson's work; she is prone therein to discuss interior, private matters and it is often difficult to know not only what she is saying, but also what her actual attitude is with respect to what she is saying. When confronted with such a situation it is easy to wander off into realms of "analysis" that over-read Dickinson's poetry so as to attribute to direct inference. A Emily Dickinson and pain term paper will attempt to take a somewhat positivist approach to the two poems. When this writer indulges in speculation it will be clearly labeled as such. Where this writer encounters what is felt to be speculation in some of the secondary sources, that too will be labeled and reasons given why it is so labeled.

Emily Dickinson Poems and Relationships

It is hoped that the Emily Dickinson and pain term paper will result in a kind of "bare bones" picture of the relationships between pain and spirituality that I believe exists in these poems. After attempting to establish the nature of that relationship I will attempt to show that what I have established is plausible given what we know about the facts of Dickinson's life and what is contained in a selection of her letters.