Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson 英美文学

(1830-1886)

Emily Dickinson 英美文学

PoetryPre-1861. These are often conventional and sentimental in nature. 1861–1865. This was her most creative period—these poems are more vigorous and emotional. Post-1866. It is estimated that two-thirds of the entire body of her poetry was written before this year.

Emily Dickinson 英美文学

Structure and syntax1.The extensive use of dashes and unconventional capitalization in Dickinson‘s manuscripts, and the idiosyncratic (特质) vocabulary and imagery, combine to create a body of work that is “far more various in its styles and forms than is commonly supposed”. 2.Since many of her poems were written in traditional ballad stanzas with ABCB rhyme schemes, some of these poems can be sung to fit the melodies of popular folk songs and hymns (赞 美诗、圣歌)that also use the common meter, employing alternating lines of iambic tetrameter(四音步) and iambic trimeter(三音步). 3.Dickinson scholar and poet Anthony Hecht finds resonances in Dickinson‘s poetry not only with hymns and song-forms but also with psalms(圣经中的诗) and riddles(迷)。

Emily Dickinson 英美文学

Major themes1.Flowers and gardens. Dickinson‘s poems and letters almost wholly concern flowers and that allusions to gardens often refer to an “imaginative realm ... wherein flowers [are] often emblems(象 征) for actions and emotions". She associates some flowers with youth and humility; others with prudence and insight. 2. The Master poems. Dickinson left a large number of poems addressed to “Signor”, “Sir” and “Master”, who is characterized as Dickinson‘s “lover for all eternity(永恒)”.These confessional (忏悔的、教派的)poems are often "searing in their self-inquiry" and "harrowing to the reader" and typically take their metaphors from texts and paintings of Dickinson's day. The Dickinson family themselves believed these poems were addressed to actual individuals but this view is frequently rejected by scholars.

Emily Dickinson 英美文学

3.Morbidity(病态). Dickinson‘s poems reflect her “early and (病态) lifelong fascination” with illness, dying and death. 。Her poems allude to death by many methods: “crucifixion, drowning, hanging, suffocation, freezing, premature burial, shooting, stabbing and guillotine”. She reserved her sharpest insights into the “death blow aimed by God” and the “funeral in the brain”, often reinforced by images of thirst and starvation 。 4.Gospel (信条、教义)poems. Throughout her life, Dickinson 信条、教义) wrote poems reflecting a preoccupation with the teachings of Jesus Christ and, indeed, many are addressed to him. She stresses the Gospels' contemporary pertinence and recreates them, often with "wit and American colloquial language". 5.The Undiscovered Continent. Dickinson saw the mind and spirit as tangible visitable places and that for much of her life she lived within them. Often, this intensely private place is referred to as the “undiscovered continent” and the

“landscape of the spirit” and embellished(美化、润色) with nature imagery.

Emily Dickinson 英美文学