earticle

영어

This article applies Scott Bryson’s ideas of place-making and space -consciousness to Emily Dickinson’s some nature poems. Dickinson’s model of both ideas makes us get over our alienation by making a place through desirable relationship with nature and realize our epistemological limitation about nature by valuing space. Voluntarily alienated from the world, Dickinson devotes herself to her place, particularly nature at home, which is for her the substitute of the religion which dominated the cultural atmosphere of Amherst in her time. Even her alienated female work at home becomes a desirable model to steward nature in contrast with the industrial exploitation of nature. Her attuned celebration of the punctual repetition of nature creates Amherst as her place and her warm hearted communion with diverse natural beings enlivens her place. In spite of Dickinson’s well-versed devotion and sensitive observation about nature, however, she admits she can never know nature. She enjoy the feeling of wonder and freedom toward endless discoveries which her realization of the epistemological limitation about nature permits. Dickinson’s model encourages us to nurture topophilac devotion to our place and at the same time to appreciate nature’s real autonomy.