2015 "I am glad there are Books. They are better than Heaven." -- Emily Dickinson

Description

What did the Dickinsons really read? A talk by Jane Wald, Executive Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum. Dickinson?s religious views have long evaded precise explanation. She refused to become a full member of her family?s church and called herself a ?pagan,? but she knew the Bible backwards and forwards and often spoke of faith and its attributes in poetry. Jane notes that Dickinson?s poems and letters chronicle a life-long struggle with issues of faith and doubt, suffering and salvation, nature and deity, mortality and the eternal. An exami-nation of the religious texts on the shelves of her family?s libraries can cast more light on Dickinson?s personal theological explora-tions in the context of 19th-century religious movements. Were they better, to her, than Heaven? Refreshments.