Keane examines Dickinson s perspectives on the role played by a supposedly omnipotent and all-loving God in a world marked by violence and pain. Keane provides close readings of many of Dickinson s poems and letters engaging God, showing how she addressed the challenges posed by her own experience and by an innate skepticism reinforced by a nascent Darwinism to the argument from design and the concept of a benevolent deity. He traces the evolving history of the Problem of Suffering from the Hebrew Scriptures, through the writings of Paul, Augustine, and Aquinas, to the most recent theological and philosophical studies of the problem. Keane is interested in how readers today respond to Emily Dickinson s often combative poems about God.
