Linguistics Meets Literature

More on the Grammar of Emily Dickinson

Matthias Bauer, Sigrid Beck, Saskia Brockmann, Susanne Riecker, Angelika Zirker, Nadine Bade

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783110642810
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Linguistica

Until recently, collaborative efforts between formal linguistics and literary studies have been relatively sparse; this book is an attempt to bridge this gap and add to the hitherto small pool of studies that combine the two disciplines.
Our study concentrates on Emily Dickinson's poetry, since it displays a highly uncommon and therefore challenging use of language. We argue this to be part of her poetic strategy and consider Dickinson an intuitive linguist: her apparent non-compliance with linguistic rules is a productive exploration of linguistic expression to reveal the flexibility and potential of grammar, leading to complex processes of interpretation. Our study includes a number of in-depth analyses of individual poems, which combine formal linguistic methods and literary scholarship and focus on specific aspects such as ambiguity, reference, and presuppositions. One of our findings concerns the dynamic interpretation of lyrical texts in which the pragmatic step of establishing what a poem means for the reader is postponed to text level.
We provide readers with a tool-box of methods for the formal linguistic analysis not just of Emily Dickinson's poetry but of linguistically complex literary texts in general.

Part I: Individual Analyses

I.1 “To pile like Thunder”: Lexical Ambiguity

Attention: This chapter presupposes familiarity with syntactic and lexical ambiguity, variable assignments, possible world semantics and speech act operations. For an explanation of these concepts in the framework we adopt, see the appendix.

1 To pile like Thunder to its close

2 Then crumble grand away

3 While Everything created hid –

4 This – would be Poetry –

5 Or Love – the two coeval come –

6 We both and neither prove –

7 Experience either and consume –

8 For None see God and live –

(J1247/Fr1353)

1.1 Introduction

“To pile like Thunder,” written c. 1875, posits both poetry and love in comparison to the natural phenomenon of thunder, and then proceeds to reflect on the relation between the two as well as their interaction with “us,” i.e. a group that the speaker is part of. We find ourselves confronted with underspecified lexical meanings on the one hand and a logical riddle on the other. The interplay of both aspects highlights the reflection process in the poem, and illustrates the difficulty human beings face in comprehending what poetry and love are.

We first discuss the interpretation of stanza one in section 1.2, and then the interpretation of stanza two in section 1.3. Section 1.4 is concerned with the overall text meaning. Conclusions are drawn in section 1.5. We wrap up this chapter and the following ones in a “summary box.”

1.2 Stanza One, Lines 1–4

Stanza one introduces the imagery of thunder, which is then compared to poetry and love. The verbs “pile” and “crumble” in this stanza are the key to an understanding of this imagery of thunder.¹ As both verbs are underspecified in their meaning, a first step is to see which meanings of the verbs are intended here and how these meanings interact.

As far as “to pile” is concerned, of the meanings listed by the OED, most are in reference to a physical event of piling or stacking something, i.e. “[t]o form into a pile or heap; to heap up” (OED, “pile, v.” 2.a.). Considering that the agent of piling is thunder, we find it most plausible to define piling as “form[ing] into a heap or mass; […] increas[ing] in quantity” (OED, “pile, v.” 3.a.), or “amass[ing], […] accumulat[ing]” (OED, “pile, v.” 4.a.). Together with crumbling, i.e. to “fall asunder in […] particles” (OED, “crumble, v.” 2.), the image created is a potently physical one: the juxtaposition “To pile like Thunder” and “crumble grand away” suggests either thunderclouds amassing and then dispersing again, or even the attempt to visualize the actual noise that can be heard in thunderstorms. We may also consider the nature of sound when it travels to first grow louder, and then gradually “crumble” away. While thunder can, thus, not literally “pile” or “crumble,” a metaphoric reinterpretation allows us to enrich the proposition constructed on the basis of the lexical meaning of either verb and consequently make sense of it. The physicality that is achieved in this way remains with the reader throughout the poem. What is more, Webster’s Dictionary evokes the religious dimension of earthly existence in its definition of “crumble, v.”: “2. intransitive. To fall to decay; to perish; as, our flesh shall crumble into dust.” In our discussion of stanza two, we will come back to the religious motifs present in the poem; as of yet, it is striking that, from the first two lines onwards, both the physical, natural world, as well as its demise in a religious context, are present.² The question of how “pile” and “crumble” are related can only be determined by a closer look at the syntactic construction in which they are embedded.

The first stanza is comprised of one sentence that runs on into stanza two. Although the punctuation is unclear, the adverbials “while” and “then” are embedded in an infinitival clause (“to pile like thunder to its close while everything created hid then crumble grand away”³) which is left adjoined to the matrix clause (“this would be poetry or love”). There is, however, a structural element that is harder to integrate in the syntax of the infinitival clause: the modification “like thunder” can be positioned at various points in the sentence structure. It can be an adjunct of “pile” as well as of the bigger structural element “pile then crumble grand away.” In the first case, only the piling is compared to thunder, whereas, in the second case, both piling and crumbling are part of the comparison with thunder. As the second option seems more plausible in the context of the stanza as a whole, which describes the natural phenomenon of thunder and compares this with poetry and love, we will assume the following structure for the sentence:

(1)	a.	Matrix Sentence: [IP this1 [I’ [I would] [VP [V’ [V be] [NP poetry or love]]]]]
	b.	Infinitival Construction: [IP [IP PROi [I’ [I to] [VP [VP [V’ [V’ [V pile]] [PP to itsi close]] [CP then crumble grand away]] [CP while everything created hid]]]] [like thunder]]

Intuitively, the demonstrative “this” seems to refer to the complete infinitival construction given in (1b). We model this in the following way: we interpret the demonstrative as containing a covert definite and a free variable, see (2a). The free variable receives its value from the context (cf. the appendix for the formal implementation). In the poem, the context furnishes the meaning of the infinitival construction as the value, see (2b). The resulting meaning of the demonstrative is (2c).

(2)	a.	⟦this<v>⟧^g = ⟦ [DP DEF [P2 <v,t>]] ⟧
	b.	⟦P2⟧^g = g(P2) = λe. e is a piling to its close [...]
	c.	“this” = the unique event e s.t. e is a piling to its close […]

Interestingly, we see that here, the demonstrative refers to an event rather than an individual (see also chapter I.4, “This was a Poet”).

Looking at the infinitival construction given in (1b) in more detail, we find that a combination of its parts results in the following meaning:

(3)	λe. ∃t [e is a piling to a close at t in w & ∀y [y is an individual in w & y is created in w → y hid at t in w & ∃e’ [e’ is a crumbling & t < τ(e’)]]] and e is in w like thunder

(4)	“the set of events e such that e is a piling to a close, while everything created hid, and e is followed by a crumbling grand away, and e is like thunder.”

With this semantics, the covert definite in the meaning of the demonstrative (see (2a)) triggers a uniqueness presupposition that there be only one relevant piling event. We accommodate that this is indeed the case: there is a unique piling event and poetry and love are compared to that piling event.

The matrix clause which bridges the gap between stanzas one and two identifies poetry or love with what is expressed in the infinitival construction. It contains the modal “would.” This modal indicates that the structure as a whole is a counterfactual conditional (see (5))._⁴

(5)	⟦would⟧ = λw. [λR<s,<s,t>>. [λp<s,t>. [λq<s,t>: p(w)=0. ∀w’ [R(w)(w’) & p(w’) → q(w’)]]]]

(6)	⟦R⟧^g = g(R) = λw1. [λw2. w2 is maximally similar to w1]

...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part I: Individual Analyses
• Part II: Emily Dickinson: The Poet as Linguist, and the Linguist as Poet
• Part III: Benefits of Interdisciplinary Work
• Bibliography
• Index