| Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) is regarded as one of the greatest American poets and enjoys worldwide reputation for her outstanding poetic achievement and independent original spirit. During her lifetime, she creates more than 1700 poems, a large portion of which has referred to the images of flowers. This thesis names them as Emily Dickinson's flower poems. According to the recognized theme classification for Emily Dickinson's poetry, this thesis divides the flower poems into four categories: flower poems with the theme of love, flower poems demonstrating the theme of life, flower poems exemplifying the theme of death and immortality and flower poems focused on the theme of nature. By interpreting and analyzing them respectively, this thesis explores Emily Dickinson's viewpoint on love, life, death and immortality and nature: Her love is unconventional, her life involves in optimistic elements, her attitude to death and immortality is aloof and her viewpoint on nature is multidimensional.Introduction covers a survey of Emily Dickinson's critical scholarship, and the scope and focus of the present study.Chapter one "Emily Dickinson's Garden" mainly introduces the significant influence that Emily Dickinson's garden with its various flowers in it, sheds on her life and her poem writing.Chapter two "Love and Flowers" centers on Dickinson's flower poems bearing the theme of love, and reveals her unconventional attitude towards love and bravery and great passion in love, which are different from the love of traditional Victorian women. Chapter three "Life and Flowers" discusses Dickinson's flower poems exemplifying the theme of life. Although Emily Dickinson is widely recognized as a melancholy poet and although many of her works are bearing tragic imprint, this doesn't mean she is totally pessimistic in life. This chapter will uncover Emily Dickinson's optimistic and active aspect in life by interpreting and analyzing Dickinson's flower poems related to the theme of life.Chapter four "Death and Immortality and Flower" analyzes Emily Dickinson's flower poems embodying the theme of death and immortality, and unfolds her viewpoint on death and immortality. Dickinson speculates death and immortality very aloofly, so her viewpoint is more objective. She neither scares of death nor longs for heaven. She has her own ideas about immortality and is more sentimentally attached to living.Chapter five "Nature and Flowers" illustrates the multidimensional nature in Emily Dickinson's eyes by analyzing her flower poems demonstrating the theme of nature. On one hand, she has intimate love for nature and learns much philosophy from it, however, on the other hand, she also realizes the mercilessness and indifference of nature. And the latter thought has become the essential in her nature poetry.The images of various flowers are widely scattered in Emily Dickinson's poetry. Through the flowers, Dickinson speaks out her viewpoint on Love, Life, Death and Immortality and Nature. Therefore, in order to understand Emily Dickinson and her works more correctly and deeply, to some degree, we should know the significant meaning of flowers in her poetry. These flowers make her poems more implicative and beautiful, and they not only reinforce the aesthetic feeling, but also deepen the artistry conception of poetry. In conclusion, Emily Dickinson's flower poems enrich her art, interpret her inner world, and occupy an important position in her oeuvre. |
