B) The riddle we can guess We speedily despise - Not anything is stale so long as yesterday’s surprise - How important is the idea of riddling in Emily Dickinson’s poetry? Cover a range of poems in your answer, and discuss at least four of them in close detail. During the late nineteenth century, Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886) featured as one of the few female poets in the largely male-dominated sphere of American literature. …showed first 75 words of 2094 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2094 total…and intense emotions - they were important as a kind of therapy; a search for answers and clues on paper. They gave strength, and were a way of combating causality. The constant metamorphoses (both of persona and topic) and ambiguities (making it possible to show that nothing is sure and yet everything is possible) in her poems suggests trickery, - evoking bewilderment but provoking questions - with so many ruses and riddles is anything determinable?