Dickinson and Yeats on God

Abstract

This essay compares and analyzes Yeats's and Dickinson's concept of God. While their contemporaries unconditionally accept God as presented in Christianity, the two poets confront and resist Christian doctrines and its institution. Each has a vision of God, man, and the world. Dickinson does not take lightly the violence and suffering under the name of God, constantly questioning the self, the church, and faith. She resists and takes a critical attitude toward God; Christianity and its institution taken for granted at the time; Christian doctrines, in which God is the center of absolute sovereignty. In the meantime, Yeats focuses on the subconscious of humanity, thus interpreting the Christian spirit and doctrine from his own occult and mysterious viewpoint. Both Yeats and Dickinson make great efforts to illustrate the correspondence and relationship between God and self through subjective perception.