Kajiwara Teruko
Department Undergraduate School , School of Arts and Letters Position Professor |
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Language | Japanese |
Publication Date | 2022/03 |
Type | Bulletin of Universities and Institutes |
Peer Review | Peer reviewed |
Title | The Erotic Body/Soul Vibrating: Physical Sensations in the Poetry of Whitman and Dickinson |
Contribution Type | Sole-authored |
Journal Type | Japan |
Volume, Issue, Page | pp.201-218 |
Details | Until as recently as a decade ago, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson tended to be regarded by literary critics as diametrical opposites. In recent years, however, some critics have launched comparative studies that reveal cultural cross-overs between the two poets. The nineteenth-century vogue for pseudo-scientific theories prompted both poets to represent ideas of Body and Soul in ways that had not been explored before. This essay explores the ways in which both Whitman and Dickinson represent the Body and Soul, and how this representation relates to concepts of poetic creativity. Whitman and Dickinson suggest that the act of creating poetry is also the act of embodying sensations such as the vibration of the erotic Body/Soul. |