Brown has tied the concept to sound/color synesthesia, a neurological phenomenon that causes people to see color when they hear music. Her research has led her to believe that during Dickinson’s most productive creative period (1860–1865), she could have been experiencing this type of synesthesia. The time coincides with an eye affliction Dickinson suffered, which led the poet, who rarely left home, to travel for treatment.
Molly Brown at Bucknell is doing work to bring music and literature together within the academic sphere, as John Darnielle, Eminem, and Colin Meloy have done in the public one. This way for more.
