Until recently collaborative efforts between formal linguistics and literary studies have been
relatively sparse this book is an attempt to bridge this gap and add to the hitherto small
pool of studies that combine the two disciplines. Our study concentrates on Emily Dickinson's
poetry since it displays a highly uncommon and therefore challenging use of language. We argue
this to be part of her poetic strategy and consider Dickinson an intuitive linguist: her
apparent non-compliance with linguistic rules is a productive exploration of linguistic
expression to reveal the flexibility and potential of grammar leading to complex processes of
interpretation. Our study includes a number of in-depth analyses of individual poems which
combine formal linguistic methods and literary scholarship and focus on specific aspects such
as ambiguity reference and presuppositions. One of our findings concerns the dynamic
interpretation of lyrical texts in which the pragmatic step of establishing what a poem means
for the reader is postponed to text level. We provide readers with a tool-box of methods for
the formal linguistic analysis not just of Emily Dickinson's poetry but of linguistically
complex literary texts in general.
