“Orpheus’ Sermon”: Making a Case for an Antiquer Dickinson

Abstract

The article discusses Dickinson as seizing upon the classics and the Latin language as correctives to the long lasting impact of Calvinism upon her cultural environment. It seeks to offer Dickinson’s classical references as the expression of a gendered approach to her society’s most crucial issues, namely slavery, war, and the role of women in the public sphere. All of which questions find a resolution of sort in her appropriation of the Orphic voice in her later poems.

Keywords

• gender
• Antique/antic
• classics
• war
• Orpheus