Mechanism of Producing Personification in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry

Abstract

Personification is an influential figure of speech which is widely used in literature. It is a literary device that functions as a way of creating symbolic images that bear hidden meanings which should be deciphered through dismantling personification into segments in order to obtain the masqueraded meaning attended in each personification. The basic objective of this paper is to key out the mechanism that Emily Dickinson employs in generating personifications, and how the poet constructs the meaning of each personification. Successively, it also aims at unearthing how the elements that the poet hires in configuring personification are blended together though they are borrowed from different and incompatible fields that never meet together unless they are mapped out together metaphorically. The Conceptual Blending Theory was eminently exploited in the practical aspect of the research because it fits the purpose of the research. This theory is basically based on the cognitive construction of meaning which is an output of blending different elements to integrate them together to attain one concept. The mathematical relation (X + Y = Z) was applied to the personification so as to unscrew its elements, then blend them together conceptually to reach the essence of the personification. However, a bundle of sundry poems were selected from Dickinson‘s collection of poems randomly. Eventually, it has been noticed that Dickinson‘s personification depicts a rhetorical image to conceive metaphoric states that broaden the reader‘s imagination towards issues and themes which simulate his own daily life‘s experiences.