Emily Dickinson: An Artistic Reclusive Life Of Deconstructing Traditional Conventions

By employing some related theoretical and technical applications of Deconstructive Criticism and the Poetics of Gender in studying Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), an American poetess of the nineteenth century, this dissertation conducts a discussion about her strategy of deconstructing tradition, and thus presents the connotations of life pursuit implied in her seclusion. Also, the paper inquires into Dickinson's exertion of her subjectivity along with her wisdom and value in seclusion, and her creativity and originality over traditional poetic skills.Observing from the angle of the positive factors in Deconstruction about subverting and dispelling traditional binary oppositions that fettered people's thought, Dickinson realized a three-layer transcendence over tradition being a human, a woman, and a poetess. She deviated from the center of religious belief at her time, thus dismantled God/human binary opposition; she shrank from patriarchal conventional marriage, being unwilling to limit her social functions of women in patriarchal culture as breeding tools and man's decorations, thus dismantled man/woman binary opposition; in writing, she boldly subverted and broke up traditional poetic skills to create her own style, and gave up entering into poetic area of mainstream. She also refused to publish her poems and giving in to traditional poetic criticism, so as to maintain originality and artistic life of her poetry, and dispel traditional male discourse central power.Hence, shunning society becomes a life strategy for Dickinson to pursue her self and subjectivity. Since she deviated from the repression and dominance of Father God, earthly husband, and traditional male critic power in poetic mainstream, Dickinson dispelled male logocentrism in traditional Metaphysics, observing in the sense of gender. However, this doesn't mean that she wanted to set up a new center to show any anti-male tendency, or claim power for women or complain about women's victimization, but tended to keep calm towards the established conventional customs and ideas brought along in the long history, and criticized them in transcendent posture with graceful generosity. This is also the attitude of the Poetics of Gender...