Utilizing Digital Archives to Explore Unique Language in Emily Dickinson's Poetry.

Digital archiving has opened up new pathways for research in the humanities, especially involving work from the pre-digital era, such as the poetry of Emily Dickinson. This paper utilizes the robust Emily Dickinson Lexicon hosted by Brigham Young University, harnessing digital tools to investigate Dickinson's bold, surprising use of language. This paper also discusses Michel Foucault's "What Is An Author?" in addressing Dickinson's unique journey to authorship. An in-depth look into Dickinson's enigmatic persona and surprising use of language reveals insights pertaining not only to the genre, medium, culture, and reader--but also about the author herself. The Emily Dickinson Lexicon creates countless learning opportunities for scholars and interested minds alike to identify and study Dickinson's radical vocabulary, and the subsequent discussions her words inspired. Such discussions are what preserve Dickinson's author status, though few of her poems were published in her lifetime. The Lexicon allows for new ways to frame and investigate important questions regarding Dickinson and female authorship in nineteenth-century America. What, after all, is an author? What constitutes publication? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]