Analysis Of Dickinson's View Of Nature

On the basis of poetic texts,this thesis attempts to reveal Emily Dickinson's"view of nature",by analyzing her poems about nature and discussing the relationship between her view of nature and Emerson's Transcendentalism and Deism.Dickinson wrote nearly 1,800 poems in her life,which was very rare in the poetic history of America,even of the world.She made great contribution to the florish and development of the world literature. Dickinson's poetry and her poetic stategies inspired many poets after her, especially the modernistic poets around the twentieth century,such as the imagists Ezra Pound,Amy Lowell and William Carlos Williams.Along with Walt Witman,Dickinson was regarded as the precursor of American modernistic poetry.Her unconventionality in writing,keen perception of outward and inward experiences and her metaphysical thought made her poems fresh and original.Among her nearly 1800 poems,500 were about nature.Nature becomes her source of writing as well as purifying her soul. She was writing many simple and original poems.While composing them, she used keen observation,exquisite touches and bright images to express her feelings.Dickinson and her poems had become a brilliant star in the literature history.Nature and human are made by God,and nature's spirit is the evidence of God's existence.Transcendentalism accepted and improved this idea.It emphasized that human beings should communicate with God and know the world depending on their own intuition,thus stressed the importance of individual.From Dickinson's poems,we can find two natures,one is harmonious,the other is mysterious.Puritanism and Transcendentalism were two foundations of Dickinson's mind.These two thoughts were the main streams in the 19^th century.Even today,we can find their influence on the American people.It is clear that Dickinson was deeply influenced by Transcendentalism. Emerson and his Transcendentalism was regarded as Dickinson's"father of literature and spirit".This paper put emphasis on her redefining to Transcendentalism,to be specific,to the transcendentalist view of nature, by discussing her nature poems.To make the discussion easy,this thesis is divided into five parts.The first part is an introduction to the whole paper.It will state the main idea and the conclusion of this paper.The way of the study and the outline of this thesis will also be mentioned in this part.Still there is a brief introduction to the literature background in Dickinson's age.And main studies on both Dickinson and her poems are also given.Chapter One is devoted to different kinds of influence on Dickinson's creation of poetry.We are going to discuss Emerson,Transcendental view of nature,Puritanism and their influence on Emily Dickinson.Chapter Two aims at Dickinson's poems about nature.In her 1800 poems there are about 500 about nature.This chapter divides these 500 poems into three parts.The first part is those to the animals,the second part is to the plants,and the third one is to the natural scenes.The poems stand for her own spirit and we are trying to find her minds in her poems.In Chapter Three,we analyze the reflection,opposition and extension of the Transcendentalist view of nature in Dickinson's poems.On the basis of the major ideas of Emerson's Transcendentalist view of nature,this chapter is going to demonstrate Dickinson's redefining to it.Finally,we reach the conclusion of the thesis.The main conclusion of this thesis will be made in this part.That is,Dickinson's view of nature was affected by Emerson and his transcendentalism,at the same time,she redifined it in three aspects.