By Cynthia L. Hallen & Melvin Wilson
A hallmark of Emily Dickinson's poetic diction is her use of polysemy, the interplay of multiple meanings. Her capacity to create so many semantic connections with so few words literally boggles the mind. One of the known polysemic resources available to Dickinson in her poetic craft was Noah Webster's 1844 American Dictionaryof the English Language. In Webster's dictionary entries, Dickinson found a catalogue of synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms,definitions, etymologies, and citations that provided rich lexical texture for her unique poetic diction. Contemporary scholars now use Webster's dictionary as a key to understanding Dickinson's intricate semantic puzzles. We are using Webster's dictionary and other reference tools to create the EmilyDickinson Lexicon, a comprehensive dictionary of the poet's word choices. This "Lexicon" will be a special dictionary for readers, scholars, and translators of Dickinson's poetry.
A WordCruncher computer concordance which accesses lexical combinations in Emily Dickinson's poems has helped us identify entries in Noah Webster's 1844 dictionary that influenced the poetic composition of Emily Dickinson. Identifying connections between the diction in Webster'sAmerican Dictionary and Dickinson's poems has accelerated research on the Emily Dickinson Lexicon (EDL).
Using an insert function, EDL lexicographers start by entering aword from Dickinson's poems into the WordCruncher concordance. Next, EDL researchers create a second list of lexical items that are found in the entry in Webster's dictionary which corresponds to Dickinson's word. Then researchers combine the lists to find sets of words from Webster's dictionary entries that are also found in Dickinson's poems. These sets of corresponding words are called WebPlays. A WebPlay occurs when the words used to define a headword entry in Webster's 1844 dictionary correspond with an identical or similar set of words in one or more of Dickinson's poems.
As we make the Emily Dickinson Lexicon, we are documenting correspondences between Webster's dictionary entries and Dickinson's word choices in the poems. These correspondences are called WebPlays. Hundreds of students and scholars have documented WebPlay connections, and several kinds of WebPlay haveemerged:
A. Simple WebPlay: one content word in an ED poem corresponds to one other word in a Webster 1844 headword entry.B. Multiple Webplay: word correspondences in a Webster headwordentry occur in more than one Dickinson poem.
C. Complex WebPlay: more than one content word in an ED poemcorresponds to more than one content word in a Webster headword entry.
D. Collocational WebPlay: words in close proximity (wordclusters) in an ED poem also appear in close proximity (as wordclusters) in a corresponding Webster headword entry.
E. Etymology WebPlay: selected words in a Dickinson poem appearin Webster's etymology for a corresponding headword entry.
F. Citation WebPlay: selected words in a Dickinson poem appearin Webster's citation under a definition for a correspondingheadword entry.
Linguistic connections between Dickinson and Webster are strengthened by historical connections between the two figures. In the early nineteenth century, Noah Webster had been a leading figure in Dickinson's hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts. Emily's grandfather, Samuel Dickinson, and Noah Webster were co-founders of the Amherst Academy and Amherst College. After spending ten or so years working on his big dictionary in Amherst, Noah Webster left in 1822, returning to New Haven, Connecticut. In 1828 he published the first major edition of his dictionary which he revised and completed two years before his death in 1843. Edward Dickinson, Emily's father, purchased an 1844 reprint of the dictionary which Dickinson used in her poetic composition.
This is not to say that we can, therefore, always proclaim that Webster influenced Emily in any particular case (though with "meatier" WebPlays this seems likely). Instead we use the term WebPlay to describe the phenomenon of correlation between an author and the dictionary used by that author as a reference tool. When several similar WebPlays occur in more than one poem this tends to add weight to the argument that ED was influenced by reading Webster's entries.
Three counter arguments exist: 1) coincidence, 2)authorial and cultural influence, and 3) natural collocation. The first counter argument states that Dickinson may havediscovered a certain combination of words that she liked,independent of Webster, and put them in several poems,correlations being coincidental.
Another explanation for ED's and Webster's similar "WebPlay" connections is that they may have been influenced by similar authors. This seems likely as Webster regularly quotes examplesfrom key texts such as the Bible, Shakespeare, and other worksthat were part of the literary canon of Emily Dickinson's day. Dickinson and Webster also share many other common New Englandcultural contexts.
Another explanation for the occurrence of the WebPlay isthat certain collocations belong to the same semantic domain orlexical chain. They contain words that typically clump togetherin almost any text (or conversation). If we were both asked towrite an article about baseball, just because we both usedthe words glove, ball, and field doesn't mean we influenced eachother's writing.
With the possibility of coincidence, third party influence, ornatural collocation as the probable cause of some WebPlays, howcan we be sure that we have discovered an instance of Websterinfluencing Dickinson? In some instances we cannot. However,some WebPlays discovered with the help of the WordCruncherconcordance cannot be easily dismissed with such counterarguments. For example, under definition 4 of the entry for thenoun KEEPER, Webster says "In Great Britain, the keeperof the great seal, is a lord by his office." In onevariation of Poem 817, Dickinson says "Only the keeper of thisseal / Conquer Mortality." The phrase "keeper of the seal"is unique enough that we can assume that Dickinson may have consulted Webster as she drafted and revised the poem.
The WordCruncher concordance makes it possible to systematicallyrecord such correspondences and use them as we create entries forthe Emily Dickinson Lexicon. The EDL entry forkeeper includes the following:
keeper, n. [keep + -er.] (webplay: keeper of the great seal). Caretaker; custodian; superintendent of any thing; in Great Britain, the keeper of the great seal is a lord who deals with all royal grants, commissions, and charters; [fig.] Lord; God or Christ. 817 Only the Keeper of this Ring [the Seal] / Conquer Mortality
A chance of further research in the form of a statisticalanalysis would be a helpful way to establish how Webster-likeDickinson's poetry is compared to many of her 19th centurycontemporaries. The significance of WebPlay connections could then be put beyond doubt in the minds of those who have adopted the "It's probably just a coincidence" approach.
AUTHOR: Cynthia L. HallenAFFILIATION: Brigham Young UniversityAUTHOR: Melvin WilsonAFFILIATION: Brigham Young UniversityCONTACT ADDRESS: 2140 JKHB, BYU, Provo, UT 84602FAX NUMBER: (801) 378-8295PHONE NUMBER: (801) 378-2020