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"The Inner Brand": Emily Dickinson, Portraiture, and the Narrative of Liberal Interiority

Emily Dickinson was famously suspicious of visual portraiture. This essay contends that this unease productively critiques the promises of liberal selfhood. Contrary to the tenets of liberal individualism, Dickinson's poetics assert that selfhood and interiority do not exist prior to aesthetic representation. The poet's engagement with the portrait confounds liberal ideals of interiority and individual expression.