'"Sacred Emblems to Partake'": Nature and Eucharist in Emily Dickinson's Poetry

Abstract

Abstract:This article investigates a small yet highly significant group of poems relying on references to the Eucharist within a wider cluster constructed around the use of the lexicon of nutrition. Through a reading that combines the analysis of formal aspects of the poems with a close examination of the cultural context in which they were written, the article shows how Dickinson consistently connects the scrutiny of Christian, and more specifically Calvinistic, doctrine to a meditation on the natural world. A first section, entitled "I do not respect doctrines," explores poems referring to a liturgy of Communion celebrated in the natural world as opposed to that observed in the church, a theme that, despite reflecting a notion of the intrinsic spirituality of nature shared with the transcendentalist movement, hinges in Dickinson on the thorny question of the election and exclusion from salvation. This issue is explored in more markedly doctrinal terms in the second section, titled "Besides the Autumn poets sing," which analyses poems revolving around the spiritual significance of the changing seasons.