Images And Their Implications In Elizabeth Bishop’s Poetry

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), one of the most eminent figures in Americanpoetry in the20thcentury, is well-known not only for her keen, delicate observationand pure, accurate poetic diction, but also for the rich and vivid image she has createdin her poetry. Image, as the carrier of the poet’s thoughts and emotions, plays asignificant role in Bishop’s poetry. The images are so numerous and vivid that theypresent to readers fantastic poetic pictures of the poet’s complicated thoughts andfeelings, for instance, white herons soaring freely above the sea, the moose jumpingout from the bush in the due moonlight, the old man netting with the polished shuttleat the fishhouse. To interpret the key images in Bishop’s poetry is a critical step toin-depth research into her poetry. It is, therefore, of great significance to analyze andstudy the major images in her poetry.Considering the modernism and confessionalism features embodied in Bishop’spoetry, this thesis intends to investigate the outstanding features and artistic effectspresented by the image in her poetry by combining approaches of text analysis andcomparative study from the diachronic and synchronic angles to point out and probeaccordingly that Bishop is greatly influenced in the process of poetic creation by someleading modernistic poets and confessional poets, especially by T. S. Eliot andMarianna Moore’s modernistic poetics and confessional poetics practiced by RobertLowell, and both make critical impact on her creation of poetic image. Based on theabove research, this thesis attempts to classify and analyze the key images in Bishop’spoems and is dedicated to further exploring and decoding the rich and profoundimplications contained in her poetic image.This thesis consists of five sections. The introduction presents an overview of theachievements made both in China and overseas concerning the study of Bishop andher major works, and introduces the theoretic bases, the major points and theorganization of this thesis. Then the significance of image in both ancient and modernpoetry is argued from the perspective of diachrony in the first chapter, meanwhile, thissection points out the application of image is a key feature of Bishop’s poetry, which plays a crucial role and has important functions. The influence on her image creationmade by modernistic and confessional poetics is interpreted in the following chapterwhile focusing on impersonal images, images with Marianna Moore’s influence andconfessional images. In the last chapter, images in Bishop’s poetry are classified intothree categories: geographical images, animal images and images of people, besides,thoughts and emotions hidden behind each sort of images are dug out to reveal theirprofound implications. Finally, the conclusion section sums up the main idea of thisthesis and makes a brief mention of the limitation of this thesis and the direction forfuture research.