My Higher Self: Elizabeth Bishop and the Endurance of Emerson

While there exists some scholarship affirming the aesthetic and intellectual connections between transcendentalism and the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, there is to date no substantial study of what role Ralph Waldo Emerson singularly played in the inheritance of that tradition. This essay seeks to validate Emerson as Bishop's literary parentage, an influence that, though not immediately identifiable, greatly shaped her creative process. In so doing, it addresses the critical mistakes which have prevented a thorough discussion of Emerson's relevance and, moreover, negatively dominated the imagination of Bishop scholarship. As an exploration of the writers' shared iconography, their mutual metaphors, the following traces three comsubjects: nature, language, and vision.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A. in English

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Year dc:date.available

2012

Author dc:creator

• Mayo, Joshua Andrew

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ann Fisher-Wirth
• Gary Short
• Cristin Ellis

• Bishop
• Emerson
• Modernism
• Poetry
• Transcendentalism
• English Language and Literature

Repository record dc:identifier

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/190

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:egrove.olemiss.edu:etd-1189