A Study Of Emily Dickinson's "The Poetics Of Space"

American poetess,Emily Dickinson(1830-1886),has been a mystery up to now.Is she an agoraphobic?or is she "the Madwoman in the Attic"?why does she live in seclusion?Is "father's house" a sheltered place or a jail?What role does her beloved garden play at that time?How does she define her own identity by space?Set in the social,history,cultural context,this paper starts with Emily Dickinson's everyday space,further explores her identity and reveals the spatial character in her artistic creation.This paper mainly consists of 9 parts:Part one is introduction.The research motivation is briefly sketched.Research methodology,purposes and significance are demonstrated on the basis of the current situation of studies both at home and abroad.Part two,part three,part four,and part five discuss the issue of Dickinson's identity from different aspects,such as the reason for Emily Dickinson's seclusion,three everyday spaces(house,garden,swamp)and social and cultural spaces,considering that it was the love for homesteads and the realization of the importance of homesteads that made Dickinson a defender,successor and builder."Father's house" is neither her jail nor her sheltered place,to be exactly speaking,it was a cocoon which made her a butterfly or a corm that made her burst into bloom."Mother's garden" is based on rules of male-dominated culture as well as the survival wisdom of females.It is by means of the love,self-identity and meditation for flowers,she not only maintain her love for nature,but also realize the adaption and redefinition of women,which further develop into an aesthetic and non-utility attitude toward life.Swamp is a space recalled by Dickinson when she is facing the problems of self-identity.It is the demonstration of elemental chaos,having dialogism,containment,freedom and development,which provide inspiration for her identification.Part six and part seven further explore Emily Dickinson's spatial awareness and identity from the standpoint of the poetic forms of Dickinson and her artistic creation of transgression.Dickinson's artistic creation is another spiritual living space that she open up out of her real living space.Her poetic form has strong spatialized character while her artistic creation was transgression.Solitude and breakout are important issues in Emily Dickinson's life.Part eight further discuss the concrete connotation of Emily Dickinson's poetics of space from "circumference",an image that represent Emily Dickinson's career,believing that "circumference" showed the necessity of the existence of borders,the freedom of crossing borders,the richness among borders and the roundabout characteristic of realizing paths,which are the core meaning in Dickinson's "poetics of space".Part nine was conclusion.This part discuss the possible prospect of this research project on the basis of discussion mentioned in the dissertation.