The Poet

About the lecture

In this module, we think about Dickinson as a poet, focusing in particular on her refusal to play the public poet, looking in particular at her poem 'This was a Poet — It is That' (448).

About the lecturer

Dr Páraic Finnerty is Reader in English and American Literature at the University of Portsmouth. His central research interests are American literature and transatlantic literary relations. His first book, Emily Dickinson’s Shakespeare (2006), examines Shakespeare’s reception in nineteenth-century America and locates Dickinson’s allusions to his writings in this context. His second book, Dickinson and her British Contemporaries, will explore connections between Dickinson’s writings and the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, the Brontës, and George Eliot.