Emily Dickinson

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How do women, historically excluded from the role of preacher because of their gender, gain authority to assume a prophetic voice? What rhetorical strategies can empower the woman who would claim the role of prophet? In this book, Beth Maclay Doriani looks at the ways Emily Dickinson addressed these questions in the context of patriarchal nineteenth-century New England. She explores some of the central strategies Dickinson used to claim both poetic and religious authority and to join the ranks of the self-proclaimed prophets of her day - literary figures like Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, as well as a host of preachers and other popular orators.