ABSTRACT
Dickinson’s engagement with the work of Isaac Watts needs re-examining. Although a Calvinist, Watts’s Non-Conformist position, and the context of Protestant Dissent rife within the religious culture of his day, has been overlooked when discussing Dickinson’s use of the hymn form and her allusions to his work. Watts’s background of Dissent and his position as an Independent Congregationalist in relation to the Established church are aspects reflected within his devotional poems and hymns, where there is an emphasis on autonomy, choice and accessibility. In a similar way, Dickinson’s poems articulate dissent and autonomy in relation to representations of the divine within orthodox religion. Protestant Dissent articulated itself in opposition to the ‘Divine Right’ of Kings during Watts’s time. Also with an attitude of defiance, Dickinson finds her autonomous voice in opposition to the prescribed paradigms for spirituality in revivalist New England. She draws attention to this most notably in poems such as ‘Title divine, is mine’ (Fr 194) and ‘Mine - by the Right of the White Election!’ (Fr 411) where orthodox rhetoric ‘divine right’ and the Calvinist notion of ‘election’ are reclaimed, not without irony, within the context of her personal experience. Accessibility and autonomy in Watts is expressed by the enlarged and ‘sublime’1 view of the world that is defended rigorously in his hymns. This is also counterbalanced with a lowered linguistic register and dependable metre. But Watts’s influence on Dickinson goes beyond simple matters of style. Dickinson’s dissent is registered equally in her reluctance to name the divine and in her vigilance in avoiding being mastered by intimations of sublimity, Romantic or otherwise.
