On Emily Dickinson’s Religious Attitude In Her Works

Emily Dickinson’s poems are full of innovations and the style of her poems is unique. Not only is the poetic form of her poems unique and striking, but also the ideas contained in them are original and thought-provoking. Because of Dickinson’s profound thought and unique understanding of life, her poems are often as difficult to understand as enigmas. In the collection of Dickinson’s poems, her religious poems and religion related death poems not only take up a large portion of it, but also are more confusing than other poems. While some of those poems can be read as pro-Christianity poems, some can be read as anti-Christianity ones. So because of it, some scholars regard Dickinson as a person who held paradoxical attitudes towards Christianity. In order to know Dickinson’s intention of writing those religious poems and death poems and have a better appreciation of them, the author of this thesis explores Dickinson’s religious attitude towards Christianity through the close reading of the collection of her poems and letters and gets the result that Dickinson didn’t believe in Christianity. Therefore, he lays the foundation for choosing a proper angle to understand Dickinson’s religious poems and death poems.The thesis is made up of three chapters. In chapter one, the author gives an account of the connection between Dickinson’s family and Christianity, showing that Emily Dickinson was brought up in a Christian atmosphere. Then the author shows the importance of his study with the analyses of several Dickinson’s religious poems and death poems, which are difficult to understand and seem to contain conflicting ideas.In chapter two, the author analyzes a large number of her poems with different themes selected from the collection of her poems, exploring her religious attitude with the help of her poems. In his analyses, the author puts the poems in this chapter into three categories, showing Dickinson’s opinion of life, the secular world and afterlife, which is different from popular Christian beliefs. With these comparisons, the author reveals Dickinson’s rebellion against Christianity.In chapter three, through the reading of Dickinson’s letters, the author explores her attitudes towards Christianity at her different ages. The author analyzes Dickinson’s letters written in her youth, middle age and later years and comes up with the conclusion that Dickinson didn’t believe in Christianity all through her life.With the analyses and studies in this thesis, it is easy to see that Dickinson meditated on Christianity because of the influence of Christianity at her time, and such thinking was reflected in her letters and poems. But the frequent mention of Christianity in her poems doesn’t mean that Dickinson was a fervent Christian. Under the pressure of the Christian revival movement and relatives’persuasion of conversion, Dickinson had to obliquely express her rebellion against Christianity in her poems. The significance of the author’s study is that he combines Dickinson’s poems with her letters in his study and explores the poet’s religious attitude towards Christianity from different aspects. Such study can enable readers to know Dickinson’s intention of writing her religious poems and death poems, helping them to decipher those puzzling poems. Besides that, the study can also show Dickinson’s profound and unusual thoughts.