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Full text release has been delayed at the author's request until January 01, 2026

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“Faith is a fine invention": Emily Dickinson’s Role(s) in Epistemology and Faith.

Yui Jien, Yoong (Regina)
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1584553779278779

Abstract Details

2020, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, English (Arts and Sciences).
In an age of both religious revival and upheaval, Emily Dickinson was not concerned in showing how Christian or un-Christian she was in her poetry, but her affections focused on the rationalization and deconstruction of religious beliefs in the nineteenth century. Previous studies vary from claiming Dickinson as a devoted saint to her as a blasphemous woman poet rebelling against a patriarchal God. She was determined to scrutinize God and the assumptions surrounding religious beliefs of her time in search of a line of inquiry that includes doubt and uncertainty. The problem with defining Dickinson as a religious poet (or not) derails readers from unravelling and appreciating the way Dickinson’s poems create a dialectic approach to perceiving the world. She is not a theologian who argues about faith. Rather, Dickinson uses the performativity of roles such as the rejected and rejecting outcasts, passive supplicant, and the playful warrior to present the paradoxical tensions of faith. By challenging rigid religious belief that shun the unknown and uncertainty, Dickinson concerns herself with the validity, methods, and scope of belief to expose the dangers of homogenous ideology and religious rhetoric which limits the possibilities of knowledge. I argue that Dickinson’s process of determining aspects of Christian beliefs—the tension between her need for rationalized epistemology and her longing for faith in God—point toward her resilience in seeking the truth of things. Dickinson is concerned with a system of belief which is both epistemological and faith based. By tracing Dickinson’s treatment of the unknown through a paradoxical framework of belief and unbelief, especially the way she embraces and discards both scientific methods and conventional aspects of faith—often seen as necessary and essential—reveal a line of inquiry which is multifocal and erratic. She wants to “tell all the truth and tell it slant.”
Thomas Scanlan (Advisor)
Paul Jones (Committee Member)
Mark Halliday (Committee Member)
199 p.
Bible; Biblical Studies; Literature
American Literature; Emily Dickinson; Religion; Gender; Epistemology; Poetry; Herman Melville; Nathaniel Hawthorne; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Roles; Performativity

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Yui Jien, Y. (2020). “Faith is a fine invention": Emily Dickinson’s Role(s) in Epistemology and Faith. [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1584553779278779

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Yui Jien, Yoong. “Faith is a fine invention": Emily Dickinson’s Role(s) in Epistemology and Faith. 2020. Ohio University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1584553779278779.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Yui Jien, Yoong. "“Faith is a fine invention": Emily Dickinson’s Role(s) in Epistemology and Faith." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1584553779278779

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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© 2020, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Ohio University and OhioLINK.