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Carmen Dörge, Nadine Bade, Identifying Referents in Emily Dickinson’s ‘If it had no pencil’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 52, Issue 4, October 2016, Pages 393–413, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqw032
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Abstract
In our work, we combine linguistic and literary methods in the analysis of poetry. Our analysis is based on the assumption that leaving possibilities open and ambiguities unresolved have been intended by the author in order to enable individual choices regarding the interpretation of the poem. We shall illustrate our methods through the analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘If it had no pencil’. Locally, we look at semantic structures and phenomena (such as mismatches or ambiguities) within the text. Globally, we look at biographical and intertextual information which might help to illuminate Dickinson’s special use of certain words by going beyond the text. This approach systematically reveals which meaning components can be identified by a strict semantic analysis of the poem and which components are more flexible and require additional information. It can therefore be specified what the source of different interpretations is, and which of them can be considered plausible.