FULL AS OPERA: EMILY DICKINSON'S RHYME

Emily Dickinson's poems are marked by departures from orthodox rhyme. From the time of her earliest editors on, her rhymes have been criticized as careless or inept. Attempts to correlate her partial rhymes (also called slant, or inexact, rhymes) with themes of defeat, dissatisfaction, and despair have been inadequate. Even though the applause of leading literary figures and a rising tide of scholarly attention in recent decades have enhanced her poetic stature, uncertainty persists as to whether her rhymes constitute a serious defect, an eccentric quirk, or a major accomplishment. This dissertation shows that her rhymes are a crucial part of her verbal artistry.;Dickinson's handling of rhyme is an important facet of her artistry. Moreover, her rhyme strategies have implications for theoretical poetics, suggesting a fuller view of the aesthetic and semantic value of rhyme generally.;Study of Dickinson's textual variants proves that, while she spent a great deal of time and thought in revision, she is faithful to her original rhyme patterns: full rhymes usually stay full, and partial rhymes usually stay partial. What she has to say in her poetry about language and sound indicates that she had a keen ear, that she often thought of poetry in terms of sound, and that she had given a good deal of conscious deliberation to the aesthetic effects of sound. Analysis of structural patterns in her poems reveals that rhyme is a versatile and significant part of the architectonics of her poetry and an important determinant of closural and non-closural effects. Instances of rime riche and rich consonance show her exploiting linguistic oddities with remarkable sophistication.