In the poem ” The Brain is wider than the sky” by Emily Dickinson
The poet compares our minds to the sky, the sea, and the weight of God. All of them are vast in their respective fields, while also being something that has not fully been understood. The poet states how the mind can be abstract and hold a spectrum of meanings, relating to how she compares the mind to the sky, the sea, and the weight of god in different aspects of their relation to our minds. They all have their blind areas, a portion that is untouched and yet to be understood, just like the nature of mind. Some features that jump to me as being important to the question “what is Literature” is one example of how the sentence “The Brain is wider than the sky” can be literal and non-literal at the same time, it compares two things and the relation between the two, but the relations are not realistic and accurate. Culler also states how both literal and non-literal works can be studied together and in similar ways, much like our poet’s comparison of the mind with a different perception and the correlation between the two entities. The poem constantly refers to the use of metaphors and how the poet chooses to express the central message of the poem to the readers, this shows us some aspects of Culler’s “what is Literature” such as metaphors and hyperboles.