This book aims at a systematic analysis of linguistic phenomena in the poetry of Emily Dickinson by combining the methods of linguistics and literary studies. The authors concentrate on the poetry of Emily Dickinson, since it displays a highly uncommon use of language. They argue that this is part of her poetical strategy and gives evidence of a large degree of linguistic competence and awareness.

• Foreword
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: Individual Analyses
• Introduction
• I.1 “To pile like Thunder”: Lexical Ambiguity
• I.2 “You said that I ‘was Great’”: Scales and Contextual Parameters
• I.3 “I’m Nobody!”: Interpreting Quantifiers
• I.4 “This was a Poet”: Identifying Referents – Definites and Demonstratives
• I.5 “If it had no pencil”: Identifying Referents – Pronouns
• I.6 “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun”: Semantic Mismatches and Coercion
• Part II: Emily Dickinson: The Poet as Linguist, and the Linguist as Poet
• II.1 The Poet as Linguist
• II.2 The Linguist as Poet
• Part III: Benefits of Interdisciplinary Work
• III.1 Poetry as a Data Source for Formal Linguistics
• III.2 Formal Linguistics as a Tool in Literary Studies
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index