A Study Of Homecoming In Elizabeth Bishop’s Poetry From The Perspective Of The Poetics Of Space

Hailed as one of the preeminent modern American female poets in the 20~thh century,Elizabeth Bishop is renowned for“Bachelardian manner”by virtue of her imaginative writings on space.With a high sense of social responsibility,Bishop’s bereavement of parents at an early age and her wandering life trajectory make her integrate the individual’s rootless living experience into the contemplation on the living state of all mankind.The domestic and foreign studies on Bishop’s poetry mainly center around autobiographical criticism,feminism,postmodernism and writing skills,while few scholars study homecoming theme from the perspective of the poetics of space.The poetics of space focuses on the role of space in shaping human spirit.Imagination is injected into space images to endow them with human value,make them strike a chord with the human mind,and thus impel human beings to find the value of their own existence.With theoretical support of the poetics of space,this thesis attempts to highlight the poet’s humanistic care embodied in actively exploring the way of existence for the spiritually homeless groups.This thesis is divided into five chapters.Chapter One is the introduction which sketches briefly Bishop’s poetic achievements,literature review,the theory of the poetics of space so as to put forward the central argument of this paper.Chapter Two focuses on spiritual homecoming of the homeless children in childhood house space.By seeking parental love in family house space and family corner space and thus gaining the sense of protection and the sense of stabilization,children who are plagued by physical and mental diseases due to the indifference of family relationship are cured of asthma caused by emotional loneliness and gain the strength of survival under the emotional support of love.The poems reveal that the parental love is the mental harbor for homeless children,consoling their painful hearts and giving them the power to survive.Chapter Three mainly analyzes spiritual homecoming of the homeless colonized in vast nature space.The colonized who are rootless due to deprivation of land regain spiritual freedom by returning to the primitive land and connecting with the roots of ethnic culture in miniature rainforest space and immense wild space.Land is the spiritual core of the Indian people.Only through integration with land can they understand themselves and regain the Indian cultural identity.Chapter Four sets sight on spiritual homecoming of the homeless lower class in cosmic building space.The bottom people,who lost their subjectivity due to the oppression of industrial production,achieve homecoming by means of poetic imagination in dream mansion space and dream garden space to sublimate the current suffering situation into the experience of beauty and to regain subjectivity in acquisition of love and hope.Poems points out that poetic imagination fills up the existential nihility of the life subjects,makes them no longer a part of the machine in the factory,but a group with the sense of existence,showing the efforts made by Bishop to guide the lost people in modern society to reconstruct the spiritual world by virtue of poetry creation.Chapter Five,based on the recapitulation of the whole paper,accentuates the homecoming theme and points out that space construction is an essential carrier for Elizabeth Bishop to lead the homeless group to achieve spiritual homecoming.Bishop’s poetry exhibits her exploration and philosophical contemplation on the existence value of the homeless groups and provides vital guidance for the homeless groups to get rid of spiritual crisis and find their own existence significance and life value in modern society.