On The Themes Of Emily Dickinson's Poems

Emily Dickinson(1830-1886) was as famous a poet as Walt Whitman, who lived in the nineteenth century. During her lifetime, she remained unknown and lived as a recluse, with only seven poems published anonymously. After her death in 1886, about 1800 poems were found in her drawers. And just because of those poems, she is considered as "the greatest and most creative poetess" and "the greatest poetess after Sappho in the West". ~1 Some literary critics think that Emily Dickinson can parallel with Shakespeare on the part of her mastery of the language. Like Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson has already been acknowledged as one influencing the American poetry in the new epoch, while most of the literary critics also think that Emily Dickinson is one of the pioneers of the modern poetry in the West, ~2 the greatest woman poet in America so far.The similarity between Dickinson and Whitman is their breakthrough from the traditional poetic forms and attempts to find their own ways of expressing their ideas and feelings. The difference is, for one thing, Walt Whitman seems to keep his eye on society at large, and Dickinson explores the inner life of the individual; Whitman was famous at his day, while Emily Dickinson remained unknown until the twenties of the 20th century, when her poems were "discovered", and appreciated although there have been many arguments over the understanding of her poems. Dickinson's poems involve different perceptions of life, mainly about the traditional themes in literature, such as death, love, nature etc. By using metaphors, images and her "circumference", she presented her tuition and introspection in a totally original way and, thus stirring a lot of researches and arguments, she was even thought of as some sort of riddle. The hot issues have been about the themes of her poems, about which different interpretations and appreciations have been offered and discussed by both foreign and domestic literary critics.The writer of this thesis, attracted by the topic, making use of the materials available at home and abroad, making references to the interpretations of different scholars, combined with my own understanding, will try to make analysis of the themes of Emily Dickinson's poems in the hope of having an overall and comparatively objective perspective of the rich but fantastic inner world of Emily Dickinson.