“Finished Knowing – Then –” The Destruction of Certainty in Dickinson's Death Poems

Abstract

This essay explores the ways in which Emily Dickinson’s poems about death challenge romantic Puritan and Victorian conceptions of death, undermining the idea of death as a meaningful, knowable phenomenon. I argue that in placing pressure on Puritan logic—indeed, on the idea that logic might be applied to death at all—Dickinson’s poems ultimately rupture syntactically and semantically, rendering futile the search for certainty in death. This destruction of certainty, as I argue, allows Dickinson’s death poems to explore a variety of philosophical and spiritual perspectives on death and dying, taking on a renewed “life” of their own. Finally, I examine Dickinson’s poems within the context of the Civil War Era and New England Puritanism to reveal the extent to which these poetic explorations of death offer a crucial rebuttal to discourses and systems of belief eager to bring false certainty to the unknowable.