ABSTRACT
The previous chapter provided an outline of the tradition of hymnody and illustrated how the frequent ‘protests’ in Dickinson’s work can be identified as being in defiant opposition to such a tradition. Traditional hymnody has been appropriated to privilege and recapitulate patriarchal and hierarchical versions of the divine and to promote ideas of ‘social cohesion’ that reflect such structuring. The explicit challenge and protest in the stanza above is pointedly positioned by Dickinson within the context of singing. Exiled from ‘Heaven’, the speaker reminds us of the hierarchical power exerted by a congregation of others (‘they’) who define ‘correct’ spirituality and how it should be expressed. The speaker’s comparatively ‘minor’ voice and role, as one ‘shut out’ from both the dominant discourses and social organisation of spirituality can be registered and described with technical precision. Dickinson’s technical disruption of traditional hymn metrics is undoubtedly a marker of her engagement with such a tradition. This will be considered fully in the following chapter in relation to critical reception of Dickinson’s use of Wattsian hymnody. However, the level of Dickinson’s engagement with hymn culture can be seen as extending beyond this in important ways. Understanding the ways in which Dickinson uses the hymn as a dynamic space, in a manner that offers comparisons with a mystic’s relation to language and form, allows further insight into the gravity and complexity of her engagement with hymn culture. Using theoretical discourse on the divine in language and theology provides us with critical tools to describe what is generated by this engagement, other than parody. Whilst her use of hymnic space alludes to the modes of traditional hymnody it also generates space in which the divine can be re-imagined.
