Emily Dickinson's Idiom In Because I Could Not Stop For Death

All From Her American literature is just that - American. It’s written by Americans, represents American ideas, and has syntax that other types of literature don’t have. American poets of the nineteenth century incorporate these ideas as well as others into their own writing and poetry. One idea of this is romanticism, which can be defined as “an emphasis on feelings” (Roets), and one of the poets who uses this idea is Emily Dickinson. According to Brenda Wineapple in “Voices of a Nation,” “These writers were looking for an idiom elastic enough to represent each singular individual, yet, somehow, to include and symbolize all Americans” (Wineapple). Dickinson creates her own idiom through the structure of her poems, the way her poems represent her own life, and through romanticism. Through this, Dickinson creates a voice for herself unique to her own time period, and one that still holds true for the modern era.
Dickinson was mainly known for her use of dashes to create an exaggerated pause in her poems. In “Because I could not stop for death,” she uses dashes at least four times in a stanza, …show more content…
This line of the poem the speaker tells how they are driving around with death, and mentioned earlier, they are in a carriage. This is could come from her personal background, which she ties into her poems, as every writer is told they should. She was said to be very fascinated with death, so that’s most likely where most of her inspiration comes from. While she was fascinated by it, she also did experience the passings of many people who were close to her, such as Sophia Holland, her cousin, Samuel Bowles, among others (Emilydickinsonmuseum.com). Her fascination of death also comes up in “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died,” as the first line is the same as the title, the poem describes what the speaker is noticing as everything is calming down before they