Textual Studies and Emily

After working in the AML this week, I decided that what we are studying, and the connection to the internet is very interesting. Textual Studies is really cool. I have always been interested in the original writing of writers and comparing it to the finished product. I do the same thing with my own writing, going back and seeing what I changed, trying to remember why. It gives me a great deal of insight into what I was thinking at different times, something you can see when you go look at these writings online. In looking at different examples of the development of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickenson’s writing, I was excited to see that Emily would ask her sister about her writing. It makes her so much more real to know that she didn’t just come up with the amazing writing that we see today, and not only through her own revision did she come up with it, but also by asking others.
After reading some of Emily Dickinson’s writing, I found it so interesting that her lifestyle so goes against what her writing portrays. Her life as a recluse really makes her writing seem even better. The fact that she can connect to the outside world so well and describe feelings she may have never felt in her life. Everything that she wrote really touches some part of every reader. The fact that she connects to so many people, becoming probably one of the best writers of her and our time, makes her writing so much easier to appreciate. Her understanding of the world around her is so deep; her interpretation of the events going on around her is amazing.